The only way that a metaphor behind The Odyssey…the only way it works for me is that it’s not about a weary Ithacan warrior trying to return home but being delayed, distracted and detoured by the gods for ten long years…
For a wandering decade-long journey can only me processed as a story about a warrior who doesn’t really want to return home. This, at least, makes sense. Who wants to return to the chains of matrimony? Mowing the lawn, taking out the garbage, cleaning the gutters.
Odysseus is nominally trying to return to wife Penelope and son Telemachus, but he’s too curious, too much in love with brawny adventure, and too attracted to grappling with all the godly manipulations and exotic strange-itude.
Odysseus is ostensibly trying to return home, but not really. Deep down he isn’t fully into it. This is the only interpretation that seems understandable.
HE to those who’ve seen The Odyssey: Does Chris Nolan‘s film suggest that this is what’s really going on with Matt Damon‘s Odysseus, deep down? Does Nolan acknowledge that this is the core motivation at work here?
Scholars have argued that Odysseus subconsciously sabotages his own journey. His insatiable wanderer’s instinct and burning curiosity constantly pull him into danger rather than leading him toward Ithaca.
I’m told there’s a line in the film about Odysseus’s ambivalence blah blah. But this is not really a core issue.
Why do I like this interpretation? Because if applied and developed, it could make Homer’s “The Odyssey” seem grounded by something real…something psychologically understandable.
Ten years of grappling with the Gods and chasing exotic thrills around the Aegean sea makes no sense, of course. Zero story tension.