The Wanderings of Odysseus

Like many heroes, Odysseus must make a “heroic quest”—in his case, the quest is to return home to his family and kingdom. In Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel (and the original Homeric epic) Odysseus’s homecoming is not a selfish impulse but rather a quest with societal and communal motivations. While Odysseus loves his home island of Ithaca very much and longs to be with his wife and son, his quest is also driven by his sense of honor and responsibility to his family, his people, and his kingdom. As a husband and a father, Odysseus has a duty to protect his wife and to preserve the property and rights that will pass on to his son after he dies. In Odysseus’s absence, the suitors harass his wife Penelope and squander away his son Telemachus’s inheritance. As the leader of the Ithacans who fought with him at Troy, Odysseus is responsible for bringing his people safely to their home. And as king of Ithaca, Odysseus is responsible for maintaining law and order in his realm.

In this way, Odysseus’s commitment to his homecoming defines his heroism. Odysseus puts all of his focus into his heroic quest and does not allow the many challenges and temptations he faces on the way to deflect him from his homecoming. When a few of Odysseus’s men eat the lotus fruit and forget their desire for home, Odysseus drags them back to the ship; when all but one of his ships are destroyed by man-eating giants, Odysseus sails on, still hoping to save his surviving men; when he is shipwrecked—twice—he floats until he reaches land. Odysseus receives offers on more than one occasion to forget Ithaca and start a new life of ease somewhere else, a temptation he faces on Circe’s island, Calypso’s island, and the island of the Phaeacians. Each time, however, Odysseus rejects a life of ease in order to continue on his heroic quest for home. As Odysseus tells Calypso, it is his heroic duty to face whatever hardships lie ahead: “[A]s for the troubles and dangers of the voyage if I should come again to shipwreck, I must endure it as I have done before, taking my chance with the sea and all its perils” (58).

For all his resilience, Odysseus’s quest is not entirely successful. While he eventually reaches Ithaca and reifies his position by killing the suitors, he fails to bring his men home. All the Ithacans who followed Odysseus to Troy are killed on the homeward journey. To some extent, they are responsible for their own ruin—it’s Odysseus’s men who open the bag of the winds given to Odysseus by Aeolus, and Odysseus’s men who eat the cattle of the Sun Lord on Thrinacia. Nevertheless, Odysseus’s failure to bring his men home makes his homecoming bittersweet. Similarly, Odysseus’s years of wandering have taken a toll on him as well as his family. Even if some of the difficulties that have beset Ithaca in Odysseus’s absence—such as the suitors—can be washed away with blood, the peace that ends the story comes at a cost: Odysseus has lost his men, his mother has died of grief waiting for him, his father has grown old, his son has grown up without a father, and neither he nor Penelope is young anymore. Like many heroic quests, Odysseus’s arc is not without its share of tragedy.