The Odyssey is Boring as Hades (Mostly)
I love mythology, and I’m not afraid to cite my sources on that claim . You got stories offering myths and monsters, immortal gods and impossible goals? Sign me up. I love coming across a strange creature or reference in a book or film and going down an internet rabbit hole to see where it came from.
Which is why it is with great disappointment that I have to label The Odyssey, one of the pillars of classical mythology in literature, boring as all hell (or the fields of Asphodel, if you will).
If you haven’t read a translation of The Odyssey and only know the plot points from TV and movies, as I did for years, it sounds like a grand adventure: Odysseus outwitting the Cyclops, the sirens (seen above), the witch Circe, the cannibals, the feuds with the gods… Those all sound like they could be Top 5 One Piece arcs! Bring it on!
But of the 24 books that make up the story, all of those sea-faring, monster-y adventures only take up 4 books (Book 9 through Book 12). I repeat, the coolest parts of the book only make up 1/6th of the story. And what about the other 5/6ths you might ask? Oh, it’s about how much everybody misses Odysseus, and wants to marry Odysseus, and wants to marry his wife, Penelope, and then Odysseus and his son magically massacre some people and get off scot-free.
I know you can make any story sound dumb when you reduce the plot to bullet points in a disinterested tone, but really, a lot of the meat of the story is Odysseus’ son Telemachus asking people where his dad went, suitors wanting to marry Penelope and eat all of Odysseus’ food, and Odysseus sneaking around in disguise to test how cool people think he is before he goes on his murder-spree.
Test an analogy. The original Star Wars trilogy (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) takes a little over 6 hours to watch. Now I want you to imagine that every cool thing in those movies, every light saber duel, ground battle, space dog fight, narrow escape, Han Solo saying something witty, all your FAVORITE moments… happen in the third hour of the trilogy. The other five hours are now people talking about how cool Luke is, and wondering if he’s married, and going home to Tatooine after his rad adventures to slaughter some bullies back at Tachi station.
That doesn’t exactly sound pleasant, does it?
It’s foolish present-ism to hold an ancient poem meant to be read aloud over the course of days to modern day entertainment standards, but I think it’s interesting that some of the most recognizable stories from myth, ideas that have captured the imagination for over 2000 years, were just a flashback sequence in a longer, drier story about what the Greeks found manly and acceptable versus what they found brutish and savage.
Suffice it to say, I don’t teach The Odyssey. And while it’s not going anywhere, I think it’s also fair to admit that we’ve been looking at this thing with rose-colored glasses for a very long time. But if you disagree with me, that’s totally cool. Address all angry emails to nobody@ithaca.com