Return of the Hero

Odysseus Returns to Ithaca

Now, Odysseus concludes his tale of his ceaseless wanderings. This is the end of the flashback and we are now in "real time". The Phaeacians are so moved by his story - and he is after all one of the greatest of the Greek heroes - that they build for him a magic ship that will speed him home quickly. Odysseus lands on the beach of Ithaca after sailing home from Phaeacia on the magic ship. Disguised as a beggar, he makes his way to the hut of Eumaeus, his faithful old swineherd who doesn’t recognize him. But, despite Eumaeus poverty, he behaves as a gracious host and offers Odysseus his humble meal which Odysseus gratefully accepts. While they are eating, they hear the sound of dogs snuffling and the footsteps of a man approaching. It is Telemachus, Odysseus’ son who is returning from his year’s journey searching for his father.

Irony: Both father and son return to Ithaca after long absences on the same day.

Irony: The son who is searching for his father, doesn’t find him until he returns home.

Telemachus does not recognize his father, of course, for he hasn’t seen his father since he, Telemachus, was a baby. But Odysseus quickly sees the resemblance and when Eumaeus calls him by name, he realizes that this young man is his son.

Telemachus also acts like the gracious host to the impoverished looking beggar sitting in Eumaeus’s hut, never realizing that it is his own father.

Vocabulary:
Lithe: limber, flexible
Candor: honesty, frankness

Telemachus tells the old beggar (Odysseus) that he will try to help him as much as he can but the suitors are treacherous and wish to kill him (Telemachus). Telemachus sends Eumaeus to Penelope to tell her that her son has arrived home. The two men are left alone.

Athena cannot bear the suspense any longer and working her magic, makes Odysseus look younger, handsomer, taller, more massive and well, more like a movie star. Telemachus is shocked and afraid by the sudden transformation and thinks that Odysseus must be a god and begs him not to hurt him, but Odysseus tells him that “I am the father that your boyhood lacked.” When Telemachus still doesn’t believe him, Odysseus says that he is the only Odysseus who will ever come. Finally believing him, Telemachus embraces his father. Unleashing twenty long years of loneliness, Odysseus begins to sob as he throws his arms around his longed for son. The men sob like hawks whose nestlings have been killed by farmers.

Homeric Simile: “Salt tears rose from the wells of longing in both men, / And cries burst from both as keen and fluttering / as those of the great taloned hawk, / whose nestlings farmers take before they fly. // So helplessly they cried, pouring out tears, / and might have gone on weeping till sundown.

THE BEGGAR AND THE FAITHFUL DOG

When Odysseus and Eumaeus go to the Palace, they discover an old dog, Argos, lying on a huge dung pile, left there by the slaves to die. Odysseus recognizes the old dog as his beloved puppy whom he raised and hunted with before he left for the Trojan War. Now the dog is well over twenty years old, but the old dog remembers his master, and flattening his ears, and weakly wagging his tail he uses the last of his strength to crawl to his master and welcome him home. Odysseus wipes a tear away and struggles to control his emotions.

Eumaeus comments that Argos’ master trained him as a great hunting dog but left and is now dead in a far off place. When the dog was young the youth would take him out for hunts and he was the best hunting dog of all the pack, but now that he is old, he is forgotten and neglected by the slaves. Eumaeus says that when a person goes into slavery half of her/his humanity is taken away.

Happy that he has lived long enough to see his master return home, Argos closes his eyes in eternal sleep.

Literary Terms:
Personification: “Now misery has him in leash.”
Personification: Giving human characteristics to inanimate objects.

Can misery hold anything in a leash? No. But the image is powerful and conveys with great and multi-layered strength the tragedy and suffering of the dog who is in a leash not held by his beloved master, but by the cruel hand of misery.

Irony: Eumaeus does not realize that he is talking to Odysseus about the young Odysseus and his dog.

Irony: It is ironic that the only creature in Ithaca who immediately recognizes Odysseus is his old hunting dog.

Would Argos be treated this way if Odysseus had been there for the past twenty years?

What does this say about the state of the kingdom that an animal is neglected in this way?

What can one infer about a society by how it treats its animals and other weak, vulnerable members?

Book 19: Penelope, the Beggar and the Nurse

Maudlin: mawkish and overly sentimental.

Odysseus, transformed by Athena to look like an old beggar, makes his way to the palace where he finds his home in complete disarray, filled with drunken, rude suitors who are bankrupting his wife and son out of their inheritance. The suitors, thinking he is just some old beggar, are abusive to him and call him names and throw stools at him. Penelope apologizes for their rude behavior but tells him that she cannot control them. When Odysseus, disguised as an old beggar tells her that he has news of her husband, she eagerly tells him to meet with her late that night to tell her all.