What Happens to Odysseus After the Odyssey? I Travel to Ithaca to Find Out
My Review of the Odyssey
What happens to Odysseus after the Odyssey? Can you imagine him just settling down in Ithaca after 20 years of warring and wandering?
No notable “sequel” tells of such a happily ever after. Some say he rejects domestic life and abandons Penelope and Telemachus for more adventures. Some say he ends up marrying the Queen of Thesprotia and is mistakenly killed by his own son. Some say he sails into the Atlantic and drowns as he is about to reach Mount Purgatory.
I became fascinated with Odysseus’ ending because I too am a wanderer. I have not settled down romantically. I am a seeker when it comes to religion. I am constantly travelling. And unlike Odysseus, I don’t even have a single Ithaca to return to having grown up between worlds. By asking the question, “Will Odysseus ever settle down?” I wanted to figure out if and how I will be able to settle down.
The interesting philosophical question is this: is wandering good? And, if not, how does one stop wandering? The common advice is to quit “cold turkey,” but what if you should accelerate your way out?
For example, Odysseus had sex with two divinely beautiful goddesses for eight years before he was ready to go back to his wife. Remember that he wanted to stay longer than a year with Circe and had to be convinced by his crew. And Homer tells us that at the end of the seven-year stay with Calypso, the nymph was “no longer pleasing to him,” implying that she initially was (Homer’s Odysseus is much more lustful than Nolan’s).
What if that’s what the wanderer should do in all circumstances: indulge in hedonism until you see the limits of pleasure; make so much money that you cure yourself of avarice; become famous to rid yourself of vanity. What if you should indulge in things most people would say are completely out of bounds but still come out unscathed on the other side by tying yourself tightly to the mast?
These questions around “what ought the wanderer do?” motivated me to investigate the literary explorations of Odysseus after the Odyssey. I’ve picked four of the most canonical accounts – the Telegony, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Tennyson’s Ulysses, and Plato’s Republic. I will explain to you their fascinating plots and what they have to teach us wanderers.
Odyssey Movie Review
Nolan’s Odyssey is so close to being great. Here’s my spoiler (lite) review after just having reread Homer’s Odyssey.
First off, the good: the look and feel of the film is incredible. But the greatest accomplishment must be the pacing. Nolan managed to follow the in media res structure, include (most) of the big episodes, without any of it feeling rushed. I particularly like how he combined many scenes (e.g. Calypso, lotus eaters, and Phaeacians) into one.
If he had just avoided these three mistakes this would’ve been legendary:
Odysseus is Overly Moralized
Deception is Underutilized
Racially-Mixed Ithacans Breaks Immersion (it’s not just black Helen of Troy but the mixed White/Black/Indian/Chinese crew of Odysseus that subverts a key premise of the story)
Each of these contributes to a lack of mystery in the film. I elaborate on each of the points below: