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

by Daniel Mendelsohn

It is only after the gore has been cleaned up and the palace ritually purified that Odysseus encounters his wife once more and finally reveals his identity to her. And yet, as with the scene in Book 16 that reunites the father and his son, the reunion between husband and wife in Book 23 starts off with a disconcerting anticlimax. Penelope, we are told, has slept through the mayhem; now she is waked by Eurycleia, who announces the great news to her mistress—Odysseus has returned and killed the Suitors! But to the nurse’s bewilderment and to the stupefaction of Telemachus, the queen doesn’t believe a word of it. Indeed, she turns out to be as suspicious and wary now as her husband has been throughout the poem. Her cautiousness in this scene, so like Odysseus’, is simultaneously a marker of the couple’s genuine like-mindedness, homophrosynê, and a frustration for Odysseus, that notorious deceiver and trickster, who finds himself in the odd position of not being believed when he finally wants to be—when he is finally telling the truth.