(I) WHAT IS FAMILIAR ABOUT THE Odyssey

(A) What is an odyssey? Defining myth, mytheme, adventure, surprise:

What is likely to be familiar about the Odyssey? You have probably seen the title of Homer's poem used in ordinary English today, as when someone writes, "The life story of Bill Clinton has been an odyssey: he gets his humble start in Arkansas, gets away to distant places like Georgetown and Oxford, even as far as Yale. Getting back to Arkansas, he gets ahead, not without setbacks, but finally gets to the very top, back in Washington, to say nothing of anything else our hero may have gotten into, nor to mention any yarns he may have spun in the effort to get through, get by, get along, get around, get ahead, or get off."

You may even have better examples of odysseys in your own lives, if you got here from a distant place, if you had trouble getting away from there and getting here, if you are struggling to get ahead. Perhaps, then, we can define the word "odyssey" as an experience of getting from one spot to another that is hard to get to, where one goes to get something that is hard to get and hard to get away with, and from which it is hard to get back. A synonym for "odyssey" would be quest [on which further remarks available by clicking here].

Perhaps we can also agree that such experiences follow a STORY LINE, which we may also call a PLOT or even a MYTH. We can also analyze our story line and note that it can be broken down into four main themes, which we will call MYTHEMES, since they are the smallest meaningful segments of the whole.

The first MYTHEME in our odyssey plot involves getting there (getting started, then getting through or over any hurdles, obstacles, perils, or getting out of baited traps along the way), the second MYTHEME involves getting what you went to get once you get there; while the third MYTHEME involves getting away with it in spite of the guards; and the fourth MYTHEME involves getting back where you came from, again, as on the way out, getting past dangers, which may be harder now because the prize you're bringing back makes you more likely to get ripped off.

In such a story, we can notice, the traveler keeps coming up against the unexpected; in other words, dangers and distractions keep overtaking one. Now "over" plus "take" add up to what in the languages derived from Latin gets called SURPRISE; while coming upon or up against gets called ADVENTURE. So the odyssey we have been defining turns out to be a classic plot of adventure and surprise.

Now the likelihood of surprise is what makes the adventure interesting, although risky, and even perilous, if we are doing the traveling. That sudden rainstorm in the desert, the wall of water rushing down the arroyo; or that delicious looking fruit on the unfamiliar tree; or that avalanche in the Alps. The surprises are what give us something to tell if and when we get back. They catch the interest of listeners and readers, who recognize the dangers and enjoy the thrill at a safe remove. As a rule, then, travail and trouble in travel become entertainment if one lives to tell the tale.
 
 

(B) Myth & Mytheme in Homer's Odyssey:
 
 

With this plot of adventure now planted firmly in mind, let's see how it matches what we remember of Homer's Odyssey. First there's phase one: does Homer tell us how his hero left home and set out to travel? No, he leaves that out: you have to go to other storytellers if you want to hear that the hero Odysseus had been a war resister, that far from being eager to face adventures and risks, he tried at all costs to get out of going, even pleading insanity, pretending to be medically unfit. As for phases two and three, getting what you went for and getting away with it, Homer in the Odyssey doesn't tell us much about that either, apart from brief mentions of the great wooden horse with which the Greeks managed to trick and destroy Troy. Homer hardly lets us suspect the existence of stories that during the war Odysseus stole the image of the goddess Athena from her temple in Troy, incurring her hostility and rage. Instead, Homer focuses on phase four, the travail of the traveler trying to get home. This is the main topic in the four books of the poem*9, 10, 11, 12*that you were asked to read for today.

At this, point, we should write the outline on the blackboard, so we can visualize it: image it, as the psychologists say, the better to fix it in memory. Does anyone remember the whole list of adventures well enough to transcribe it in the order in which they unfold? No, well then, let's go back over them to refresh our memories.
 
 

(C) Outlining the Adventures of Odysseus:
 
 

When we read these books in my sections of Core Studies One, I always want to get right to the myths, but my students stop in amazement at the very first episode. Although we might expect Odysseus and his companions to be weary of war after ten years, loaded with loot, and eager to make a beeline for home, the first thing they do after leaving Troy destroyed is to raid the nearby city of the Kikones, Ismaros: they killed the men (autous) and took the women and other possessions to divide among themselves so that everyone got a fair share. After this, Odysseus, as he says, and remember that Homer represents him as telling the story, Odysseus says that he counseled a quick getaway. But his companions insisted on celebrating their victory all night, drinking and roasting sheep right there on the beach. Their carousing gave the natives time to get reinforcements from up country. They counterattacked the next morning and managed to kill six men from each ship before the fleet could get away.

Next Homer imagines the little flotilla leaving behind the region of Troy, at the northwestern edge of what today is Turkey, sailing south and west across the Aegean Sea past the rocky islands and around the jutting peninsulas of southern Greece. He pictures them passing Malea on the verge of turning northwards up Greece's western coast towards home in Ithaca when sudden malignant winds blow them out of control for nine days. In this way, Homer gets his story off the real map, away from identifiable geography, into the realm of fantasy, yet a fantasy meant to feed on the actual geography of what lay further West around Sicily and the up the Italian coast [9,62-104].

[1a: Eaters of Lotus] It is hard to forget the first landfall, where Odysseus sends scouts to find out "what men, eaters of bread, might live here in this country" (9,89). The question proves to be loaded, since these people are defined by what they eat and it is not bread but lotus, which has the following effect on the scouts: (9,94-98)
 
 

[2a: Cyclops's Maw] The second adventure presents an even graver threat to getting home and again involves habits of eating [9,105-end]. This may be the most familiar of all: how the expedition arrives at a place where the inhabitants are known as Cyclopes, because of their one big circle of an eye, how Odysseus insists on learning about the culture of one Cyclops, Polyphemus, although the other Ithacans want to steal a few lambs and run; how Polyphemus shuts the visitors up in his cave and begins eating them two-by-two, washing down their raw flesh with milk (strictly not kosher); and how Odysseus tricks Polyphemus by pretending to be named "Noman," so that when the monster cries out that "Noman" is hurting him, his fellow Cyclopes reason that he needs no help. Of course Odysseus, once he escapes, cannot resist shouting back to assert that his real name is Odysseus: a gesture that establishes his identity, alright, but nearly aborts his return home, since it brings down the wrath of the god of the sea, Poseidon, who is the father of Polyphemus.

[3a: Aiolus's Windbag] In the third adventure, then, the Ithacans seem about to get home, when a different kind of surprise gets in the way. Remember how Odysseus gets all the unfavorable winds tied up in a sack from the wind-king, Aiolus, and the good West Wind blows the fleet nine days back from the imaginary realm. But just in sight of Ithaca, Odysseus falls asleep and his jealous companions open the bag thinking to count the treasures they suppose that their captain has squirreled away. At this, the winds rush out and drive the fleet back to get lost again in the imaginary realm [10,1-79].

[4a: Laistrygones' Maws] After this stormy passage, of course, the sailors welcome a protective harbor when they find one. All rush to get their ships inside to anchor amidst the looming, encircling cliffs. Odysseus alone stays aloof and outside. The usual scouts meet the powerful daughter and monstrous wife of the king of the Laistrygones, who gobbles one man down on the spot. Then the populace encircles the harbor, throw rocks to smash the ships and spear the sailors like fish for food. Only Odysseus's ship gets off [10,80-132].

[5a: Circe's...] Anxious and fearful the survivors arrive at yet another island, where they face yet a different surprise [10,133-end]. In a variant of the by now familiar pattern, half the crew goes to explore. They come to a magical dwelling, where they find a goddess weaving and singing. Her name is Circe and she gives them a potion that contains "malignant drugs, to make them forgetful of their own country" (10,236): not merely forgetful, since Homer imagines these drugs turning the men into swine, with bristles and all, even to an appetite for acorns and buds. Naturally Odysseus comes to the rescue, with help from a god. This proves to be the god of trickery and trading, business and theft, Hermes, who provides a magical plant and a plan: all that it takes to get Odysseus into Circe's bed and get his companions out of the sty.

The plan succeeds so well that both captain and crew forget their desire to get home for a year, enchanted by the ceaseless eating and drinking. Circe's place sounds like an all-inclusive resort on a Caribbean island, where tourists go to pig-out. At last it is the crew who remember their mission and ask about getting home. At this point, however, Circe announces that a detour will be required, that Odysseus will first have to get to the far western edge of the world and get prophetic knowledge from the realm of the dead. Only on getting back from that venture will his homeward voyage get under way, beset by yet graver obstacles and surprises.

[1b: Siren Song] The first of these further adventures displays a characteristic of Odysseus that by now is familiar [12,142-200]: he wants to investigate whatever turns up along the way, without pressing single-mindedly on towards home. In this case, he contrives to hear the singing of the Sirens, even though he knows their song would keep him from getting home, unless he is tied to the mast while the ears of the oarsmen are stopped with wax.

[2b: Scylla's Six Maws] But now Odysseus has to choose between losing his whole crew and the ship to the whirlpool of Charybdis or sacrificing six men to the six monstrous maws of Scylla [12,201-259]: that's where we get the proverbial expression, "Caught between Scylla and Charybdis," which is rather like the other expression "Between a rock and a hard place."

[3b: Sun's Cattle] The grieving survivors find themselves between such a metaphorical rock and hard place in the next adventure. Homer represents them as marooned on an island and doomed either to starve or be killed by the gods if they eat the only available food, which is the immortal herd of cattle that belong to the sun. The men reason that they are certain to starve if they don’t eat, whiles who can be certain about the gods. Besides, it is worse to starve than to drown. So they feast and when they sail, Zeus sinks the ship and the crew [12,260-419].

[4b: Charybdis' Big Maw] Odysseus, all by himself now, faces two final adventures. Floating on the mast and keel of his ship, he gets blown back to Charybdis, but manages to avoid getting sucked down into the whirlpool.

[5b: Calypso's...] From there he gets carried for another nine days to another island, where the nymph Calypso receives him in her vine-girt cave by the sea. For seven years, then, he remained there, required to make love to the goddess by night, but sitting by day on the shore and longing for his distant home. III DISCOVERING STRANGENESS IN THE Odyssey
 
 

(A) Theme Patterns & the Nature of Surprise:

So much, then, for what is familiar. For the remainder of this conversation, we can begin to ask how to discover surprises in the familiar, once we go back to look at it in different ways. In other words, from this point on we can consciously and deliberately get started on a search for meaning in the story, which up to now we have pretty much been retelling because it's a good story. Now we need to ask what makes a story good and why it grabs and holds our attention. What's in this odyssey business for us.

Note that I have described what we are about to do by means of a metaphor. That's to say, I identified reading and rereading as a kind of journey, in which we will seek for the unexpected and experience surprise. My metaphor suggests that reading, too, can be thought of as an adventure, like the adventures in the story we read.

If we look, now, at the whole list of adventures, what should surprise us? As a method of inquiry, I suggest that we try to pick out themes that occur more than once. Once we have noticed such similarities, we can begin to measure how the themes differ and we can decide whether the changes lead in any direction or add up to any kind of development:
 
 

Now we are free to go back and pick up on some of those hints. Just consider what emerges if we compare the parallel adventures in the two columns:

The answer, I would say rather hesitantly, must be something like the following. I think that surprises by their very nature reverse the normal. They go against expectation. Now, what we expect is rooted in our normal lives, normal circumstances, normal ways of eating, drinking, doing business, traveling, making love. That means in Homer's case that his surprises depend for their effect on the existence of a normal way of life, going on around the shores of the Mediterranean: for example, growing grain and grapes, baking and eating bread, trading and raiding, but not eating flesh.

But if surprises offer clues to normality, then the list of Odysseus's adventures should let us infer what was usual in Homer's society. The adventures become a kind of index in reverse to the practices and values of the culture. And of course once we get a picture of another culture, we can compare it to our own and go on to ask whether we face similar or different situations, and whether we handle them in similar or different ways, for better or worse.

Now that we have a theory about how to extract one kind of meaning from the story, let's test it by looking again at our list of adventures. One theme that recurs is the loss of six men. It belongs to what we might call the plot of diminishing returns, as the crew gradually lose their chance to get home: six here and six there, besides the wholesale disasters. The causes of loss vary: on the beach at Ismaros because the men insisted on staying to carouse, the windbag opened by jealous greed, the harbor that proved a trap, the drugs of Circe incautiously consumed, the desperate hunger that makes them eat the forbidden beef. By contrast, Odysseus appears more cautious and canny, or when bold (as with the Cyclops) at least capable of thinking his way out, though he does insist on his name. On balance, then, the story favors the captain over the sailors: this is not a surprise, but it does allow us tentatively to conclude that the poem was made in a society that contained a dominant group more likely to identify with Odysseus than with his crew, a society, in other words, marked by class division, so that the poem was designed to appeal to the expectations of an upper, dominant class. Whether we share that identification or not is a question we may want to debate.
 
 

B Male vs Female in the Concept of 'Home'
 
 

Now let us get back to our project of extracting meaning from the surprises. We assumed, you recall, that surprises represent the opposite of what the society expects as a norm. Clearly Homer's audiences were prepared to hear of the hero as a dominant figure, far superior to the common men of his crew. But if we look yet again at the list of adventures, yet another set of expectations emerge, and these reveal something further about the poet and his society.

Each adventure is presented as some kind of obstacle and opposite to the goal of getting home, so each may be taken as a kind of counter example of the culture's idea of what home ought to be. Not the oblivious eating of lotus. Not the cave-dwelling shepherd Cyclopes, cannibal, with no laws, or religion, or community. Not the wind-king whose sons and daughters marry each other. Not the roving daughter of the cannibal Laistrygones. Not the enchanting witch with her zoo. Not the fatal singing of Sirens. Not the six barking heads that issue from Scylla's grotto. Not the maw of Charybdis. Not, above all, the grotto of Calypso, which engulfs the hero and turns him into the sex-slave of the goddess whose name means, "cover" or "enclose." As Homer represents her, she is the extreme opposite to home, since she offers the hero immortality: he would never die, would always through all time stay on her island, entering her cave by the sea every night to make love with her, who never gets wrinkled and old. In spite of such blandishments, however, Homer represents Odysseus as spending his days on the beach thinking of home.

What is remarkable about this picture, as a number of readers have been underlining in recent years, is the degree to which the surprises are calculated not merely to show off the hero at the expense of the commons, but also, even above all, to illustrate the kinds of risks a male may run when he is far from his base at home, where he is understood to be in charge. The same readers have pointed out that the main obstacles that keep Odysseus from getting back to his home are endowed with gender, and that the gender at issue is not male. From this, the readers infer that the function of the home in that society (the OIKOS) was to incorporate and control the female, which otherwise was felt to be a threat to the very identity of the male. This reflection brings us around to the published theme of this lecture, which was "Adventures of Gender and Identity."

With the theme of gender in mind, we can look yet again at our chart of surprises. In the account of the Laistrygones, the monstrous princess and queen offered the first threat, while the harbor itself, with its deep gulf and encircling cliffs looked like a natural analogy for the female body through metaphor: by this reading, the story would express male anxiety at being engulfed by female anatomy and power.

Circe of course is a female who exercises strange allure, only to turn men into beasts. Readers have pointed out how elaborately Homer represents not only her enchantments but especially the stratagem by which Odysseus deals with her. He has to be reinforced by a magical plant, given him by another god. Homer represents the encounter as follows: [10,307-347].

Note that Homer makes the hero draw his sword from his thigh and threaten Circe, then require her to swear an unbreakable oath, before finally he goes to bed with her to make love. In other words, the scene dramatizes female sexuality as a threat to male dominance: [10,339-341]
 
 

Scylla is blatantly female, with her six monstrous heads that issue from a grotto and suck men in, never to get out. Also gendered female is the engulfing Charybdis. Above all, then, Calypso represents the dangers of the female. She neither sings nor weaves like Circe, instead merely forcing the male to serve her own sexual pleasure in her grotto. This manifestation of the female effectively subtracts the male from the world where he might rule a community and be remembered with fame, where he might tell stories of his accomplishments that could be remembered and passed down through time. Her realm totally negates the identity of the hero and brings the plot of the Odyssey to a halt.

At least one reader has gone so far as to suggest that a linkage to these threatening females can be found in the representation of the Cyclops Polyphemus. The argument, as I recall, goes something like this. Polyphemus is represented as the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea; and the sea is associated in the male imagination with the female, imagined as a force that cannot be tamed or controlled. By this reasoning, Polyphemus forms part of the whole natural realm that eludes and threatens male dominance. Not accidentally, then, Homer represents the Cyclopes as lacking the very practices and patterns of culture by which Greek males structured and ruled their lives. If you think back, you will remark, now, that Odysseus makes a great point of underlining what the Cyclopes do not do: they do not have laws, or military formations or public assemblies; they do not have religious observances; they do not cultivate the soil with agriculture, nor, above all, do they make ships with which they could travel to colonize and trade. In short, in them Homer makes the total opposite of the institutions and arts that characterize the lives of Greek males of that age. In keeping with the other traits, the Cyclopes are said to keep to themselves and treat their wives and children pretty much as they please.

If, then, the surprises allow us to infer what the society expected and what it feared by way of reversal, it would appear that one central preoccupation of the males in that society (theirs being the voices that have been allowed to survive) was what to do with female sexuality, how to get it into a framework in which it could be controlled, exploited, traded even, by males. The adventures illustrate what men saw as risks and perils to male success, dominance, ambition, and fame, deriving from female forces on the loose.
 
 

C Male vs Female Today & in the Rest of the Odyssey
 
 

Here two kinds of questions arise, which you may want to address through further reading. One set of questions regards our own society: how do we deal with sexuality, both male and female, today? How do we explain it biologically and how do we handle it socially, legally, morally. At the basis, we can observe, is the biological and physical certainty that children clearly issue from mothers. Far less obvious is the role played by the male. "Who can know for sure the identity of his father?" remarks the son of the absent Odysseus. Paternity is uncertain in the absence of elaborate accounts of how males contribute to reproduction and in the absence of strict control over the sexual activity of women. Culture has to step in to explain and control: culture has to define a role for the male in relation to the self-evident role of the female. The result, in Greek culture, was a set of rules designed to assure the dominance of the male and the patriarchal line. These roles, of course, are what are debated today. What do we expect? Do all of us expect the same things? How do we understand sexuality and gender? Just to pose the questions is to acknowledge how fluid and how contested the answers still are.

With the contemporary debate in mind, we can go back to our other set of questions, which will lead us from the list of surprises out into the rest of the Odyssey. There we can search for more direct evidence of how Homer and the other males in his society view female sexuality. This is a longer journey of research. We can only point to some crucial evidence here. The rest, I mean the actual discovery, will be up to you as you read, not only for the story, but for what the story reveals about the people who made and were entertained by such tales.

You will remark how Homer gets his story started and pushes it through. He imagines that the goddess ATHENA (yet another of the females that figure so importantly in the poem) decides it is time to get Odysseus away from Calypso and get his son to begin to grow up. The figure of Athena itself is a remarkable construct from the viewpoint of gender and specifically the issue of male control of female power: from your mythology you may remember that Athena was represented as the daughter of ZEUS by the goddess METIS, whose name means craftiness or cunning, but that Zeus first impregnated this goddess of cunning, then swallowed her whole and produced the child Athena himself, out of his head: in other words, the myth represents male power taking over and controlling not only cunning but even the female power to reproduce. Athena among the goddesses is the one with no sexual drive of any sort: the female perfectly subordinated to the power of the male. The fact that she becomes the key figure in shaping the plot of the Odyssey reinforces our sense of the poem's bias in favor of males.

In the first scene, then, Homer creates a plot of suspense: posing the question, what will Odysseus find, even if he gets home safely. One outcome might resemble the fate of Agamemnon, who won the war at Troy but on getting home, you may recall, was murdered by his wife and her lover.

Homer then switches to a detailed picture of what the absent Odysseus is missing at home, and how the home suffers when left without its master, occupied only by his immature son and by his abandoned wife, Penelope. The father's absence has left the son without a model to shape his identity. Likewise, the husband's protracted absence has created a crisis of identity for his wife. On the one hand, she is still faithful to her identity as the loyal and dutiful wife, but on the other hand, his apparent disappearance has thrust her into the potential identity of remarriageable female, prone to be appropriated by another male.

From your scrutiny of the house of Odysseus absent, you will go the house of Menelaus in book four and look closely at the notorious Helen: she, after all, was cast as the cause of the whole war at Troy. Her ambiguous sexuality was at the heart of the conflict. You will want to ask yourself whether here in the Odyssey her behavior and relations with her husband represent the model of the ideal home.

Pressing on, you will linger over the picture of Calypso, where every detail will burst with ironical double-entendres. But like Odysseus, liberated by the powers of Athena and Hermes, you will have to move on to the next stage, where Odysseus finds himself stranded on the island of the Phaiakians, who are master sailors, and must devise a strategy to get them to convey him home. Here you will weigh the image of the marriageable princess, Nausicaa, and her mother, Arete, who is said to be the power behind the throne. Clearly they represent some kind of an alternative to his home in Ithaca, but not final goal or the ideal home. In Odysseus's account of his adventures to the audience in which these women are present, you may wonder at his treatment of females. You may scrutinize the amount of attention given to females in the underworld, but then you will encounter Agamemnon and hear his diatribe against women.

For the ideal, you will focus at last, like Odysseus, on the figure of Penelope, the anxious mother and tested wife. You will take note of her contradictions, between her identity as devoted wife and that other potential for freed sexuality; and you will take careful note of how Homer represents the restoration of harmony between her and her errant male: how they both arrive back at their identities as husband and wife, in harmony with one another, which is the final touchstone in the poem for the relations between the sexes, and which masks and mystifies, concealing and congealing, the threats, uncertainties, fears with which the drama of sexuality was fraught for those old Greeks as it is for us.

Since this lecture has turned into a set of questions to prompt further adventures in reading, it seems proper to open the floor to you to let you raise any immediate concerns.
 
 
 
 

In addition to memory and reflection, I have drawn on the following in preparing my lecture: