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Odysseus' Oar

The first ghost that Odysseus encounters in the After Life is that of Elpenor, a member of his crew who in a drunken stupor has fallen off of Circe’s roof to his death. Elpenor’s corpse remains unburied, and his ghost will not be able to cross the River Styx and find rest until his body has received the necessary funeral rites.  He pleads with Odysseus for a proper burial:

    Do not leave me unburied, unmourned,

    When you sail for home. . . . 

    Burn me with my armor, such as I have,

    Heap me a barrow on the grey sea’s shore,

    In memory of a man whose luck ran out.

    Do this for me, and fix in the mound the oar

    I rowed with my shipmates while I was alive.  (Bk. 11, lines 68-75, Lombardo)

Elpenor specifically asks Odysseus to mark his grave with the oar that represents for him and for anyone who visits his grave the story of his life: he was a man of the sea and a companion of the great Odysseus.  Odysseus’ first act upon returning from the world upon which Helios does not shine will be to bury his companion.

After encountering Elpenor, Odysseus seeks out and talks to Tiresias, the great prophet who alone among the dead is allowed to retain his true mind (nous) and will now advise him how to avoid the various dangers that await him on his way home and how finally to make peace with Poseidon.  To achieve this peace, Tiresias instructs Odysseus to plant an oar in a place where ships and the sea are unknown:

    Then you must go off again, carrying a broad-bladed oar,

    Until you come to men who know nothing of the sea,

    Who eat their food unsalted, and have never seen

    Red-prowed ships or oars that wing them along.

    And I will tell you a sure sign that you have found them,

    One you cannot miss. When you meet another traveler

    Who thinks you are carrying a winnowing fan,

    Then you must fix your oar in the earth

    And offer sacrifice to Lord Poseidon,

    A ram, a bull, and a boar in its prime.  (Bk. 11, 119-128, Lombardo)

According to Tiresias, only by making his peace with Poseidon will Odysseus be able to return home to stay and live to a prosperous old age. The story of Odysseus planting the oar is not actually included in The Odyssey.  Its fulfillment is left to the reader’s imagination. Whenever Odysseus does plant that oar (and he tells Penelope that he will leave soon to do so), he will be marking the end of his life on the sea, his life of adventure that has been dedicated to learning about strange lands and peoples.  Odysseus will essentially come home to die, whatever the count of years, having set up his oar to mark the end of his story. Tiresias then foretells the manner of Odysseus’ death:

    And death will come to you off the sea, 

    A death so gentle, and carry you off

    When you are worn out in sleek old age,  (Bk. 11, lines 132-134, Lombardo)

Odysseus’ actual death is, however, preceded by the metaphorical death of that Odysseus whose life was full of exploits. While Elpenor’s oar represents an actual death, Odysseus’ oar represents a loss of identity.  It is yet possible to imagine that Odysseus will begin a new life at home, one that includes the values of home and family, and thereby acquire a new identity as a husband and father. 

*It is no doubt also true that Odysseus is extending the realm of Poseidon by planting his oar among folks who are ignorant of the sea. Ironically, Odysseus, who can hear the beat of the sea from his Ithacan bed, must suffer helplessly to the end of his days the sea's call to adventure. 

Odysseus' Homecoming

Odysseus arrives on the shore of Scheria, the land of the Phaecians, naked and seaworn, having survived 20 days at sea and Poseidon’s wrath.  As he looks about for shelter, he catches sight of two olive trees close by:

                  One wild, one planted, their growth intertwined,

                  Proof against blasts of the wild, wet wind,

                  The sun unable to needle light through,

                  Impervious  to rain, so thickly they grew

                  Into one tangle of shadows.   (5.483-488,  Lombardo)

 With a glad heart Odysseus scrapes out a makeshift bed beneath the branches of these olive trees and covers himself with the leaves that have piled up there.  That the trees are olive represents Athena’s care for our hero, but that one is wild and the other planted makes the reader think of the relationship of Odysseus and Penelope, the wandering hero and the wife at home.  It is their love for each other that preserves them: Penelope from submitting to the vulgar suitors and Odysseus from all the tempting women he meets along the way, especially the beautiful Calypso whose offer of eternal youth he spurned in the hope that one day he will re reunited with his wife.

The simile that follows the description of the two olive trees compares Odysseus to a solitary man who seeks the preserve his fire for another day:

                                                                                A solitary man,

                  Who lives on the edge of the wilderness

                  And has no neighbors, will hide a charred log

                  Deep in the black embers, and so keep alive

                  The fire’s seed and not have to rekindle it

                  From who knows where.    (5.493-498, Lombardo)

The fire’s seed is Odysseus’ undying desire for home and hearth that yet burns within him.  The reader anticipates the day when the fire will rekindle and blaze in its full glory – the day Odysseus returns home disguised as Aethon (‘burning’) to reclaim his wife and home and slaughter the suitors. The wayworn hero will discover his and Penelope’s bed remaining rooted as ever by its olive post in the earth of his beloved Ithaca. 

Penelope's Homecoming

Though it may seem that The Odyssey is largely about the adventures and trials of its eponymous hero, there yet is significant evidence that real hero of this epic is Penelope who represents the values of home and family.  The most telling evidence for this surprising claim comes when Penelope takes on the role that Odysseus usually assumes as the one who tests the character and loyalty of others. Indeed, in Book 23 Penelope tests Odysseus directly concerning their marriage bed.  When Odysseus is outraged that she has apparently cut the olive tree that serves as one of the bed’s posts and so anchors it to the ground, she knows that only the true Odysseus would know this secret.  In addition, that he is outraged reveals to her that Odysseus still cares for her and their marriage.  Having tested her husband and proving herself his equal, Penelope leaps into Odysseus’ arms and clings to him just as a castaway on the sea would cling to land:

     Land is a welcome sight to men swimming

            For their lives, after Poseidon has smashed their ship     

            In heavy seas. Only a few of them escape     

            And make it to shore. They come out

            Of the grey water crusted with brine, glad                        

            To be alive and set foot on dry land.

     So welcome a sight was her husband to her.  (23.240-247, Lombardo)

This description of Penelope’s joy in being reunited with her husband is, of course, told in terms that would apply more naturally to Odysseus himself.  Indeed, the simile does at first appear to be about Odysseus:                

    This brought tears from deep within him,                        

    And as he wept he clung to his beloved wife.  

             Land is a welcome sight to men swimming  

              . . .                                                      (23. 238-240, Lombardo) 

That the simile can be effectively said to be describing both Penelope and Odysseus suggests that Penelope’s years of private suffering and delaying tactics are being held up as equivalent to the escapades and escapes of Odysseus during those same years.  Perhaps it is not too much to say that Odysseus’ homecoming is also that of Penelope.  That Odysseus will soon come home to stay after planting his oar where men know nothing of ships and sea argues for the final triumph of family and home of which the heroic symbol is Penelope.

 

           

 

            

Odysseus' Bow and Two Fragments of Heraclitus

Odyssey 21.404-411

ὣς ἄρ᾽ ἔφαν μνηστῆρες: ἀτὰρ μητις Ὀδυσσεύς,

αὐτίκ᾽ εὶ μέγα τόξον ἐβάστασε καὶ ἴδε πάντη,


ὡς ὅτ᾽ ἀνὴρ φόρμιγγος ἐπιστάμενος καὶ ἀοιδῆς


ῥηϊδίως ἐτάνυσσε νέῳ περὶ κόλλοπι χορδήν,


ἅψας ἀμφοτέρωθεν ἐϋστρεφὲς ἔντερον οἰός,


ὣς ἄρ᾽ ἄτερ σπουδῆς τάνυσεν μέγα τόξον Ὀδυσσεύς.

δεξιτερῇ ἄρα χειρὶ λαβὼν πειρήσατο νευρῆς:


ἡ δ᾽ ὑπὸ καλὸν ἄεισε, χελιδόνι εἰκέλη αὐδήν.

 

Thus the suitors spoke.  But cunning Odysseus

Straightaway after he lifted the great bow and looked it all over,

      Just as when a man skilled with a lyre and song

      Has easily stretched a chord over a new peg,

      Having fastened the well-twisted sheep-gut at either end,

Just so did Odysseus quickly string the great bow.

Then taking up in the bow in his right hand, he plucked the string

That sang beautifully beneath (his touch), a voice like a swallow.

 

Heraclitus:

Fragment 48: τῷ οὖν τόξῳ ὄνομα βίος, ἔργον δὲ θάνατος. 

                    The name for the bow is life, its work death. 

Fragment 51: οὐ ξυνιᾶσιν ὅκως διαφερόμενον ἑωυτῷ ὁμολογέει· παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη ὅκωσπερ τόξου καὶ λύρης. 

                     They do not understand how a thing opposed agrees with itself. It is a backward-turning harmony like that of a bow or a lyre. 

Odysseus’ stringing of the bow represents the moment when the opposing forces in the narrative are themselves drawn taut: the suitors' death opposed to Odysseus' rebirth as his true self. IAs Heraclitus says, the work of the bow is death.  What he does not say is that the work of the lyre is song which is in this instance the epic song of Odysseus’ homecoming. The work of the bow and the lyre come dramatically together at end of Book 21. It creates a backward turning harmony. It is worth noting that the sound of the bow is additionally compared to the voice of the swallow, a bird that returns to Ithaca in the spring, marking Odysseus’ rebirth. 

(The translations are my own.)

Timeline for Telemachus and Odysseus

 

                      Telemachus                                                    Odysseus

 

 (Day 5 is what allows us to count back to days 1 to 4, as lived by mortals.)

 

Day 1: Sets out & arrives in Pylos;                        Day 1. Crawls out on Scheria; sleeps

            talks with Nestor                                             in the leaves beneath olive trees

 

Day 2: Sets out & arrives in Pherae                     Day 2: Nausicaa finds Odysseus

 

Day 3: Arrives in Sparta; cries;                           Day 3: Cries over Demodocus’ song;

            Helen recognizes him                                      identifies himself, tells his story

 

(When Odysseus ends his story, it is said at the beginning of Book XIII that all

turned in for the night and in the morning the Phaeacians stowed Odysseus

 on the boat that was to take him home.)

                                                                       

Day 4: Spends day at Sparta;                              Day 4: Spends day feasting; leaves at

            Hears the Proteus story                                   in the evening for Ithaca

 

Day 5: Wakes during the night;                         Day 5: Wakes up on Ithaca; talks with

leaves for Pherae in morning                           Athena; meets Eumaeus

 

(At the end of Book XIII Athena leaves Odysseus to fetch Telemachus.  Her arrival in Sparta is not told until Book XIV.  There is an inconsistency: it is morning when Odysseus wakes on Ithaca; it is just before dawn when Telemachus awakes. We may imagine that time is not for Athena as it is for mortals.)

 

Day 6: Leaves Pherae for his ship and             Day 6: Spends day with Eumaeus telling

            Sails through the night                                    stories

 

Day 7: Arrives in the early light on                Day 7: Odysseus meets Telemachus, embrace

            on Ithaca; meets Odysseus;                            like sea-eagles & taloned vultures;

            Eumaeus goes to town & returns                    Eumaeus goes to town & returns

 

Day 8: Sets out for the palace                         Day 8: Sets out for the palace

 

Thinking Writing Prompts for the Odyssey

For Books 9-12. 

Download Thinking Writing English 8 3

For Books 12-17

Download Thinking Writing for the Odyssey II

 

 

Penelope's Choice by Michael Grenke

https://www.sjc.edu/application/files/1814/7793/4319/The_College_Magazine_Fall_2016.pdf

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