Odyssey Auxiliary: The Ultimate Guide to Homer's The Odyssey

“Young Dawn’s finger tips of rose, touching the world, roused” Odysseus and his Phaiakian crew to make sail before it was night (line 21). Alkinoos sends Odysseus to Ithaca with many gifts from all the princes of Phaiakia. Before Odysseus leaves, he says farewell to the Phaiakians, including the honored godlike harper, Demodokos.

The sun sets and Odysseus leaves Scheria back to Ithaca. He falls asleep on his ship and trusts the Phaiakians to take him to the right place. When he awakes, he is laying on the ground surrounded by his gifts. He doesn’t recognize anything because Athena “poured a grey mist all around him, hiding him from common sight” (line 240). He assumes that the Phaiakians have abandoned him in an unknown country instead of bringing him to Ithaca. Athena, disguised as a shepherd, goes to Odysseus and tells him that he is in Ithaca (line 315). Odysseus hides his identity until Athena decides to reveal hers.

In the meantime, while the Phaiakians are sailing back to Scheria, Poseidon is arguing with his father, Zeus. Poseidon thinks that the Phaiakians should be punished for giving Odysseus so many gifts when all he did was make up a story. Eventually, Zeus allows Poseidon to turn the Phaiakian ship to stone (line 204). Poseidon immediately turns it to stone and the Phaiakians on the ship wondered who anchored the ship when it was bout to make harbor (line 204). The end of the book takes place in Ithaca. Athena tells Odysseus that he is to wait for Telemakhos to return from his journey. She informs him that Telemakhos was in Menelaos’ mansion, but is now coming home.

Characters & Their Lessons
Character: King Alcinous/ Queen Aretes
Description: King Alcinous and Queen Aretes play about an equal role in this book. They both hear Odysseus’ entire story and bid him farewell as he leaves their home. Alcinous was mentioned more in previous books, and he showed a great interest in Odysseus and his travels. In fact, he would not even allow Odysseus to leave, or even go to sleep, until he told him the whole story. In Book XIII, Alcinous, Aretes, and the rest of their loving community learned a sad lesson that ended a part of their culture. After witnessing an entire ship of their men sink to their deaths, they vowed to never help a wayward traveler again, isolating their civilization from the rest of the Greeks. “…We make an end henceforth of taking, in our ships, castaways who may land upon Skheria…” (Lines 226-228: Book 13). Alkinoos, the King of Scheria, has a “mighty mind”, but Odysseus still tricked him with his spurious story. People can tell that Alkinoos is an intelligent person from the way Homer makes him talk. An example is the wise way that he says, “When you came here to my strong home, Odysseus, under my tall roof, headwinds were left behind you. Clear sailing shall you have now, homeward now, however painful all the past” (book 13: lines 4-8). This means that Odysseus’ journey home will be simple, unlike his journey up to that point.

Character: Poseidon
Description: Poseidon is the most emotional and irrational of the deities. He spent over 10 years trying to murder Odysseus and in only a few days, his nemesis is brought safely home by the Phaecians. Rather than just giving up, Poseidon takes his anger out by making his all-powerful brother, Zeus, kill a shipload of Phaeacians. (Zeus is also known for his habit of letting people take control of him, which is why Poseidon had no trouble convincing him to kill the Phaeacian crew). Poseidon takes this frustrating event with Odysseus as a mistake and learns from it, vowing to never take his eyes of his “prey”.

Character: Odysseus
Description: The fact that Odysseus slept his entire way home to Ithaca from Scheria shows that he has endured a long journey. But, after he reached Alkinoos in his palace on Scheria (in book VII), he came up with a super-cool, spurious story of all the heroic things that he didn’t really do. Ever since this spurious story of his, he has acted like he was already back in Ithaca and all of his troubles are already over. This is partly because the way he was treated in Scheria by Alkinoos and the princes of Phaiaikia who gave him gifts and respect all because he was good at storytelling.

Character: Athena
Description: Athena shows how she is the goddess of civilization in this book of The Odyssey. Poseidon and Zeus also show their reasoning through their symbolic self (for details scroll down to Symbolism).

Character: Other Characters
Description:

Epeioi (Line 352)
Demodokos (Line 35)
Idomeneus (Line 332)
Kronos (Line 31)
Menelaos (Lines 519, 530)
Naiades (Lines 128, 437, 445)
Odysseus (Major)
Orsilokhos (Line 332)
Phaiakians (Beginning)
Phoinikians (Line 349)
Phorkys (Lines 119, 433)
Pontonoos (Line 62)
Poseidon (Middle)
Telemakhos (end)
Zeus (Middle)

Symbolism
Athena
In this book, people can see why Athena is the goddess of culture, society and perception.

Zeus
Zeus, the god of law, is a symbol for his power and leadership. He allows Poseidon, the god of the sea to turn the Phaiakian ship to stone (lines 193-198), and without his authorization, Poseidon never would have done this because of the power that Zeus as a supreme ruler. Zeus is the spiritual leader of gods and men because of this power. It gives him respect from the other gods and goddesses, as well as from the mortals. The mortals believe he’s the captain of all gods because they fear him. They fear him mainly because of all of the power that he has over the other gods.

Poseidon
Poseidon, the lord of the sea, sees the Phaiakians’ ship in the water and decides to punish them for giving Odysseus so many gifts when he didn’t deserve any at all. He has a lot of power, but not as much as Zeus, his father, so he asks him if he is allowed to punish the Phaiakians. After a long dissent, Poseidon gets permission from his father to turn their ship to stone, freezing it in place, so that mortals on the shore can watch it for generation after generation. At first, the mortals thought that somebody anchored the ship, but they soon realized that it was the wrath of Poseidon (lines 210-212).

The Olive Tree
The goddess Athena got a whole Greek city named after her because the Greek people turned down power, beauty, control, riches (and just about every other thing that modern-day politicians would kill for) for an olive tree, courtesy of Athena. Since the birth of the olive tree, it has symbolized peace and home for the Greeks. When the Phaeacian sailors are as close to their shore as they’re going to get, they see an olive tree spreading its leaves over the land. They see this as a representation of “Wahoo! We’re home!” but Homer saw it as a chance to throw in some irony to his already twisting tale. Although the Phaeacian crew knew this olive tree to be a sign of good things, Homer turned it around on them. It was more like a representation of what they’ll never get and what was about to end. It was as if the olive tree was placed there to tease the homecoming sailors and trick them into thinking that they’ve almost returned to peace and culture and everything else that they know. When the sailors all died and the Phaeacians on the shore stared at the ripples made from the sinking stone, the olive tree lost its’ meaning to the people, thus ending a culture.

Connections
Rocks
What happens when you drop a rock in water? Yep, it sinks. Unfortunately for the Phaeacians, they’re riding that rock. Even more unfortunately, the rest of their civilization watched them all instantly petrify and sink to the ocean floor, thus making them all terrified to welcome foreigners. The symbolism behind this event is enormously prominent. The theme of a once animate being turning inanimate has been played over and over, and is still being used today. Ever seen Rocky Horror Picture Show? What happens when the Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania (aka Tim Curry) turns everyone into stone? They die. And in The Chronicles of Narnia when the nasty ice queen turns the fuzzy woodland creatures into stone, she’s killing them. So from as far back as when Homer was around, when something turns to stone, it represents that thing ceasing to exist. And in the Phaeacians’ case, it wasn’t just the hundred or so guys on the ship that stopped existing. The actual Phaeacian culture of hospitality ended abruptly, as if turned to stone itself.

Recurring Characters
One of the biggest connections that ties the Odyssey to other mythologies is that fact that the characters and places were either real or repeated many times throughout many stories. For example, King Alcinous and Queen Aretes are also characters in The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Before Achilles. Likewise, Hades and the Underworld are a constant reoccurrence in dozens of mythological stories including classics like Hercules.

Egyptians
Poseidon is the god of the water and water-related storms, but how many bodies of water did the Greeks know about? In all honesty, it’s highly likely that Poseidon was the god of just the Mediterranean Sea. Similarly, the Egyptians have a god of the Nile that appears having many of the same characteristics as Poseidon called Hapi. Also, they have a god of the earth called Geb (or sometimes Seb), an awful lot like Zeus. And remember when all of Odysseus’ crew got high on opium? Well guess who else is obsessed with the lotus flower? That’s right, the Egyptians. Nefertem is the god of the lotuses; they are considered a sacred flower. When Odysseus went to the underworld, he was ushered by Charon across the River Styx. The Egyptians have stories where the character must be ushered by the guard of the Underworld (and god of death), called Wepwawet. With the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians mythology is very closely related to religious beliefs, so if there is any similarity between the deities across cultures, there is most likely a strikingly similar mythological story from both groups of peoples

Bickering
Athena and Poseidon were always fighting and bickering about what the right thing to do was. Regarding politics, what does that sound like to you? DING!DING!DING! That’s correct: The Middle East and America!

Poseidon-like and Teiresias-like
A huge earthquake, killing 6000 and leaving 38000 injured, struck the island of Java. Sounds an awful lot like something Poseidon would have done, doesn’t it? That kind of super attack would have definitely been enough to make the Greeks respect Poseidon. One of the survivors recalls the event and says that the night before he had a dream of something terrible having and noted rats leaving his house as a sign. He made a prediction -- similar to Teiresias in the Underworld -- and he noticed an omen -- similar to the omen of the eagle killing the geese – just like in The Odyssey.

Cast Away
Odysseus’ last step on his journey home is very similar to Chuck Noland’s last step on his journey home in the movie Cast Away. In line 254, the word castaway was used to describe what Odysseus thought himself to be when he awoke on Scheria. Chuck Noland, played by Tom Hanks, is stranded on an island for four years, and after he learns how to survive on his own, he builds himself a raft and sails out to sea. He falls to sleep on the raft and waits for the tide to bring him to shore. He doesn’t have anything left to do until he gets home. All he can do is wait until somebody finds him or he sees land. Odysseus fell asleep on his final trip home and didn’t really have anything left to do either. Both Chuck Noland and Odysseus got back to their homes and were different people than when they left. They both learned the lessons that all epic heroes learn on their journey, and they both returned in the same way. Therefore, Cast Away would be considered an epic and is very similar to the Odyssey.

Links & References

This Section By: Cardin K., Will K., Sarah K.