An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic

by Daniel Mendelsohn

The recognition scene between Odysseus and Penelope is also the culmination of another of the epic’s ongoing themes. I reminded them of all the other females who had enticed Odysseus during the course of his long journey home, mortal and immortal: of Calypso and Nausicaa and Circe, all of whom were alluring alternatives to Penelope, alternatives that, in the end, he rejected. I had reminded them of Odysseus’ pointed use of the word homophrosynê, the “like-mindedness” that he recommends in Book 6 to the Phaeacian princess as the hallmark of an authentic relationship, a true marriage, the very quality that was lacking in his entanglements with the goddesses with whose beauty Penelope could never hope to compete. I reminded them of the many physical transformations that had been effected throughout the poem, starting with Athena’s transformations, first into Mentes and then into Mentor, continuing with the disguise that Odysseus uses to sneak into Troy during the escapade that Helen recalls in Book 4, going on to include the way that Athena beautifies Odysseus in order to impress the Phaeacians in Book 6 and the way in which she makes him wizened and ugly once he returns to Ithaca, in Book 13, the better to deceive the Suitors, who are indeed fooled by the appearance of the bald, shriveled old man in their midst, a great hero in disguise. I had reminded them of all those transformations, metamorphoses that, whatever their charm or their value for the plot, force the reader of...