The Odysseus: The Editor’s Interpretation

1. The Odysseus: The Editor’s Interpretation

2. Odysseus at sea (p. 353)

3. River inlet: Odysseus finally get on the land

4. A sequel and a supplement to The Iliad • Allusions to the actual fall of Troyand its aftermath • How the Greeks faced further danger in the long voyage back to Greece

5. After reading • What were the concerns of Homer, if adventures themselves were not his focus? • If you were Odysseus, what is the biggest temptation? Why?

6. Adventures as temptations to test Odysseus’s mental & physical endurance • Lotus flower: forgetfulness of home and family • Circe: life of ease and self-indulgence • Phaeacia: the love of a young princess • Sirens: to live in the memory of the glorious past • Calypso: greatest temptation immortality

7. What are the essences of life? Possible answers: • Basic needs • Sense of security • Sense of belonging • Dignity • Self-fulfillment Which essence(s) is each temptation lacking?

8. Odysseus’s dedication to life • The value Homer stresses in The Odyssey as a contrast/supplement to The Iliad • Glory in battlefield is probably not the only value in life • In refusing Kalypso, Odysseus chooses the human condition, with all its struggle, its disappointments, and its inevitable end.

9. Odysseus’s dedication to life • Against the dark background of Achilles’s regret for life, Odysseus’s dedication to life—his acceptance of limitations and his ability to seize its possibilities—shines out. • (the teacher’s note) Odysseus’s heroic qualities in seizing the possibilities of life are also set off by the vulgarity of his crew.

10. Other important notes • The celebration of return to ordinary life as a worthy prize after excitement, toil, and danger • The setting right of social disorder • Telemachus as a foil/potential rival to Odysseus’s mature wisdom

11. The Mysterious Figure of Penelope • Her dilemma in marriage: the weaving as a metaphor • The ambivalence in her trick of web • Her setting up the contest of the bow • The trick of the marriage bed • What motivates her to do so?

12. The aggressive women • Homer is affirming patriarchy: the women might be sources of social disturbances If not well-controlled • Kalypso • Circe • Prince Nausicaa • Penelope

13. Homer’s affirmation of the Greek political life • Through the disorder created by the suitors during the absence of the ruler, Homer affirms Odysseus’s restoration of hierarchical and patriarchal order in house and polity.

14. The great difficulty in resolving the issue of violence • The Odyssey is no more successful than The Iliad in resolving the problem of violence. • How can human aggression be controlled, if not eliminated? • Can violence within the community be channeled into safe, perhaps socially creative, forms?

15. Major themes • Fantasy • Magic • Domestic details • Human need for a family and a home

16. Odysseus: his character as a hero in a world without war • The different skills and capabilities required for the journey from war to peace: ---strength ---physical courage ---brains: the cunning hero ---adaptable: a man of many turns ---psychological strength: an ability both to endure and inflict pain without flinching ---patience and self-restraint to bide his time ---the will to go home and to restore it to order

17. Homer’s affirmation of the Greek political life • Self-fashioning by reference to the foreign: ---the Cyclops—no social organization ---Aeolus—living in isolation, marrying daughters to sons ---the Laestrygonians: cannibals ---Calypso: living in a cave ---Circe: living alone ---the Phaeacians: isolated from other human communities; excessively civilized

18. A question Homer poses • How ought we behave toward people who are not the same as ourselves?

19. Encounter with different cultures • The place of literature and memory in the formation of cultural identity

20. Why Odysseus was eager to go home despite all? • The poem deals with the fundamental desire we feel for our own people and our own place, not because they are better than any other, but simply because they are ours. • cultural identity •  sense of belonging

21. Hospitality: The key answer illustrated in the Greek society • Cultures may vary in other respects, but any good society will accommodate the wandering guest. • Hospitality is the fundamental criterion for civilized society in this poem. • Telemechus, Nestor and Menelaus in their reception of visitors • (How will we receive immigrant residents and denizen spouses in Taiwan?)

22. Transgressions of hospitality • Polyphemus: a grotesque counterpart to the good Phaecian hosts • Odysseus’s own men: they killed the cattle of the Sun

23. Homer’s reflection on the code of hospitality: what is the limit? • The suitors’ abuse of that code • How is Odysseus going to deal with this dilemma? • Homer’s answer lies probably in the reference to the homecoming of Agamemnon and also in Athena’s response to Telemechus’s description of the chaos suitors create

24. For what does Odysseus turns the temptations down? • ---Odysseus chooses the human condition with its struggle, its disappointments, and its inevitable end.