The Real Tragedy of The Odyssey

The Odyssey is usually remembered as a story of adventure: monsters, gods, magic islands, shipwrecks, disguises, revenge, and the long journey of Odysseus back to Ithaca. But in this video essay I look at The Odyssey as a story about the dream of home, and the question of whether home still exists after time, war, loss, and transformation. Odysseus wants to return to Ithaca. But is he returning to a place, or to a past version of himself? Is home a destination, a memory, or an identity we can never fully recover? In this essay, I explore Odysseus as a man of many faces, Homer as a mysterious and many-faced author, Penelope and Telemachus as characters with their own unfinished identities, and Ithaca as one of the most powerful symbols of longing in world literature. Mentioned / referenced in this essay: Homer — The Odyssey Homer — The Iliad Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey The Nostoi, ancient Greek stories of homecoming after the Trojan War The Homeric Question Milman Parry and Albert Lord’s work on oral tradition The traditional attribution of the Torah to Moses Dante Alighieri — Inferno James Joyce — Ulysses F. Scott Fitzgerald — The Great Gatsby L. Frank Baum / The Wizard of Oz Virgil — Georgics; Ovid — Metamorphoses, for the Orpheus and Eurydice myth Jim Jarmusch — Dead Man Franz Kafka Alfred Tennyson — Ulysses Voltaire Primary text used in this essay: Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson, W. W. Norton & Company. All quotations from The Odyssey refer to Wilson’s translation unless otherwise noted. This is not a summary of The Odyssey. It is a reflection on home, identity, memory, survival, and the impossible desire to return to the person we used to be. 00:00 - 02:16 - Intro 02:16 - 06:23 - A dangerous journey 06:23 - 09:26 - The Author of Many Faces 09:26 - 15:02 - The Hero of Many Faces 15:02 - 20:35 - Ithaca 20:35 - 25:18 - The Sea