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

by Daniel Mendelsohn

The night before class, as I read through their postings on the discussion board, I’d been perplexed that no one had mentioned the most remarkable encounter that Odysseus has in the Land of the Dead: the one with the ghost of Achilles, hero of the Iliad. It is the last conversation Odysseus has with someone he knew personally. The climactic quality of this meeting is heightened by an astonishing admission on the part of Achilles. In the Iliad, Achilles recalls how he had willingly exchanged the possibility of a long life in return for a short life with undying glory, kleos, that paramount motivation for heroic action. In the Odyssey, Odysseus meets his former comrade in Hades and is eager to assure the dead hero that his choice was the right one: But never before has a man been more blessed by fortune than you, Achilles, nor will there ever be again. While you lived we Argives honored you as if you were a god; and now you wield great power here among the dead. So do not let death grieve you, Achilles. And yet Achilles disagrees: Don’t sweet-talk me about death, brilliant Odysseus. I’d rather serve another as a land-bound serf, some man without a portion, no livelihood, than be the lord of all the withered dead. The exchange represents a shocking rejection of the values embraced by Achilles and endorsed throughout the Iliad. For the hero of the Iliad, a poem that celebrates the dark glamour of early death, to announce to the hero of the Odyssey, a poem that celebrates the o...