My freshman year of high school, we spent about a semester on The Odyssey. While it was a generally enjoyable experience, I have some lingering qualms about some of the characters. Namely, Odysseus. Honestly, what a tool. Homer managed to take the single douchiest Greek hero in the history of epic storytelling and name a whole epic after him. Also, spoiler alert: if you haven’t read the Odyssey, I’m about to summarize the whole thing. Just admit to yourself that you’re never going to and keep on scrolling, hombre.
Let’s start at the top. This big ol’ poem dealio opens with Penelope (Odysseus’s wife) and their kid Telemachus sitting around waiting for Odysseus to get back from some war. The war ended ten years ago, so logically every single person in Greece besides these two thinks that Odysseus ate it back in Troy. All these suitors are hanging around hoping that Penelope wants a sugar daddy but she’s chaste and loyal and she isn’t having any of that. We think that something awful and totally outside of his control probably happened to Odysseus, the poor guy. That sympathy runs dry as quickly as European sympathy for the modern nation of Greece during their recent financial crisis.
Scene change to Odysseus, the titular character of this work, who has been chilling out on an island with (read: having a lot of sex with) a hot nymph for the past seven years. Yeah, the whole time that Penelope has been fighting creeps off with an amphora, this stale crouton in sandals has been loungin’ around with Calypso. Sure, he was “captive” – though it seems like he gets himself out of much more precarious situations throughout the rest of this thing, so one has to wonder how hard he was really trying. I digress. Some god or another pushes him off Calypso’s island and he washes up on a different island just in time to see a perky princess washing her laundry. He goes to her place for dinner and we get to hear all about the other three years (the years not spent with that particular hot nymph).
So first they win this war back in Troy. Apparently that part’s covered in The Iliad, so I’m off the hook there. Then, instead of just going home like the rest of the combatants, Odysseus decides that he’s such hot shit that he and his men could get some pillaging in before popping back to Ithaca. First, they trash a bunch of peoples’ stuff and take some women as slaves and then those people get mad and kill a couple of his sailors. Eh, c’est la vie! Then they sail up to this island full of people drugged out of their minds and lose another few men. Oopsies! Next, they show up on some Cyclops’s island and piss him off. They end up blinding the Cyclops, so he can’t actually see who messed with him. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that when they’re busting tail out of there Odysseus TELLS THE CYCLOPS WHO HE IS. No really, I’m serious. They jump a Cyclops, make a safe, anonymous getaway and then this chump has the bright idea to yell out his own name. Turns out the Cyclops is Poseidon’s kid, essentially fucking over everyone traveling with this guy. Nice work, asshat.
Anyways, the rest of the boats crash into some shit because this dude still can’t just sail them to the correct island, and now that he’s down to one boatful of tired Greek guys he beaches them on a hot nymph’s island. No, no, a different hot nymph. This one is named Circe and she turns all the remaining soldiers into pigs. Just let that little metaphor sink in. Odysseus decides to exchange all the pigs being turned back into Greek dudes for sex. Okay, buddy. Eventually, they blow that popsicle stand and set sail yet again – this time losing roughly half of the remaining soldiers to a sea monster. (Remember that whole thing about pissing off the god of the ocean while on a sea voyage? Yeah, that was really a dumb idea.) The rest either get cut up by the sun god for eating his cows or drown when Odysseus crashes the last boat they have on Calypso’s island. What can ya do, huh? That brings us back to the top of this story.
Flash forward to the perky princess’s dinner. Her kingdom agrees to help Odysseus get back to Ithaca and they sail him home. End of story, right? Wrong. Instead of just walking in and kicking out all the scrubs, Odysseus decides he needs to disguise himself to test Penelope. Yeah, for real. This lady has been trying to protect herself and her household from a bunch of fuckboys in togas for ten years, all the while staying completely faithful to her husband who everyone is convinced is dead. Meanwhile Odysseus has killed every single guy under his command, pissed off a collection of major deities, sailed to like fifteen incorrect islands and slept with two nymphs – but she’s the one that needs to be under surveillance? Uh-huh, riiiight. Anyways, Odysseus-in-disguise figures out that Penelope is still the best and then challenges all the fuckboys to an archery contest and wins. Then he kills all of them. Now it’s the end, right? Wrong again! Because killing all of his own men at sea and stabbing a posse of mooching bachelors wasn’t enough, he goes ahead and kills all of Penelope’s maids. Yeah, for serious. As we’ve already established, this rat bastard has been literally fucking everything up for ten entire years while his wife waits for him and then he comes back and kills all her friends.
Very long poem short, everyone would’ve been better off if Odysseus had actually ate it in Troy and I’m sure Athena is embarrassed about helping that dickhead to this day.
