Like the Five-Minute Iliad, this series will cover Homer’s other famous poem, but in fewer installments. Part 1 | 2 |
I am using the Butler translation. Subscribe to follow along.
Book 9
As per my last summary, Odysseus was about to break into song, and if he had done so, it would have gone something like this:
Ooooooooo…my name is O-dy-sse-us, the son of La-er-teeeees,
I spent ten years sacking Troy, with my friend A-chill-eeeees,
When that wrapped up my boys set sail and started heading home,
But figured we could earn a buck by raiding parts unknown!
So we stopped off in Cicones, and slapped their wives around,
Had ourselves a party ‘til their husbands came to town,
The tide soon turned, we lost some bros, and hurried on our way,
Each ship left with six less men than started off that day!
Next door we found another place and saw inside a cave,
Figured we would check it out but soon we needed saved
A Cyclops, Polyphemus, he lived in there, you know!
He cut us off, from our escape, and then he ate my bro!
I played a little word game with that one-eyed-freak from hell,
He asked my name, I said “‘Noman,’ like ‘nobody,’ can’t you tell?”
While he was trying to figure out just what was meant by me,
I took a red-hot poker and…well, now he cannot see
He screamed and cried and flopped around, the boys and I all laughed
And snuck past Polyphemus en route back to our craft
But I could not resist a little boast, I must admit,
So I told him “The man who punked you blind is called Odysseus, ya lil s***!”
That came right back to bite me, as you will quickly learn,
For his daddy is Poseidon, and thus my fortunes turned…
I’m not gonna torture that more than it deserves, lol. But that’s more or less the story of book nine. Odysseus didn’t have to flex on Polyphemus after he blinded him, but pride and hubris did what they do best, and once Polyphemus had his name, he ratted him out to the sea god. That didn’t end well for Odysseus.
Book 10
Odysseus’ men—there are twelve ships’ worth of them, it’s a big group—go to another island run by a very weird dude called Aeolus, who made his six daughters marry his six sons (wtf) and also his island floats and has bronze walls all around it. Aeolus is dialed in with Zeus, because he gives Odysseus a bag of wind and it has every wind in it except for the western wind that would take his ships home. Like…dude. Bro can just tie up the elements and make them not affect Odysseus’ fleet. All they have to do is put the black ships on cruise control and they’re sitting pretty.
Except that Odysseus’ men are a bunch of morons and they open the bag of wind when he isn’t there to stop them, and they let all of the wind out and they actually get blown all the way back to Aeolus’ island. He sees them come back, flips them the bird, and says he’s not helping them again.
Between rowing and sailing, they end up on another island, this time populated by the Laestrig…I’m not even looking up how to spell it, it’s a huge word and it’s basically a specific type of giant that doesn’t like men. The giants throw huge boulders at Odysseus’ ships and crush them in much the same way that you, in your Jeep, would splash pedestrians in a rainstorm. Out of the twelve ships, only Odysseus’ makes it out. Frustrated, they sail on to Aeaea (can I buy a consonant?) which is the home of the enchantress/witch Circe. Here we encounter the first woman who totally enslaved Odysseus against his will and made him have sooper freaky magical Greek sex with her even though he’s definitely faithful to what’s-her-face back home.
Also Circe turned Odysseus’ remaining men into pigs, but Odysseus was spared because Hermes came down from Olympus can gave him a special herb that made him immune to Circe’s crazy pig-magic. He’s able to force her to restore his men, which she does, but then she says he needs to go to hell.
Book 11
Plot twist, he actually has to go to hell, aka the Underworld, to have a conversation with Teiresias, a blind prophet who’ll tell him about his future. Odysseus does a sacrifice and starts seeing ghosts, but mainly has a conversation with Teiresias, who tells him how to chat with the ghosts, and also what’ll happen when he leaves the underworld place. He’s going to go to Helios’ island, where there are sheep and cattle, but he cannot eat the cattle or else the sun god will be pissed. Odysseus has enough problems with Poseidon so he figures he’ll take this advice.
The first ghost he contacts is his own mother, Anticleia, and she lets him know what’s going on back in Ithaca with Penelope and the suitors. There’s a massive roster of female characters that he sees, before he pauses his story for an aside with Alcinous and Arete. Then he tells them about his conversations with several of the noble dead from Troy, like Ajax, Agamemnon, and Achilles. (Learning that Agamemnon was dead, and that he’d been betrayed by his own wife, was a surprise.)
The encounter with Achilles is perhaps the most moving. Odysseus praises Achilles’ legacy and recounts how much people admire him, but Achilles says he doesn’t care: being a poor, nameless servant above ground is better than being a king among the dead. This really changes the context of his actions in The Iliad in a meaningful way.
Odysseys tells Achilles that his son Neoptolemus was inside the Trojan Horse and was braver and more composed than anyone else. Achilles hears this and heads off to chew on it, and the text doesn’t say whether he’s happy or sad about it, he’s just a father and a fallen warrior who got news about his son following in his footsteps.
Odysseus finally called it good on his visit to the underworld when too many ghosts rushed him, desirous to tell their stories, and to hear news of the land of the living. He returned to that plane himself and started heading home with his friends.
Quick note: I’ve heard this scene in Nolan’s movie leaves out Achilles and replaces him with Ellen Page’s character Sinon, who isn’t in The Odyssey. Sinon is a Roman addition by way of Virgil in the Aeneid, written hundreds of years after The Odyssey. I think this is where the rumor came from that Page was playing Achilles. I still haven’t seen the movie, this is just my assumption.
Book 12
Odysseus leaves Circe’s island, forewarned and thus fore-armed about the pending threat of the sirens. He has the men plug their ears with wax so they can’t hear the siren song, and they leave his ears unplugged whilst tying him to the ship’s mast. They sail past Scylla and Charybdis and lose some men but manage not to fall victim to the sirens. They get stuck on Thrinacia and, despite Odysseus’ warnings, the men eat some of the cattle on that island, which belong to the sun god Helios. He goes and tattles to Zeus, who sends lightning and thunder to destroy Odysseus’ ship, killing the last of his men and leaving him adrift at sea.
He’s there for over a week before he washes ashore on Calypso’s island, where she gives him seven times as many years’ worth of sex, and that catches us up to where we are in the story. So it’s pretty non-linear at first.
Man, I’m really glad I tackled this in chunks of four. That has turned out to be the right call.
Side note: while I’m still reading the Butler translation in print, I’m supplementing my reading with the Fagles translation on audio, narrated by Ian McKellen. So if some of my summaries aren’t as detailed as others, that’s why. I’m trying to catch up on all these projects.
Thanks for reading.
Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.
My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys.
Find my video reviews on YouTube.
I finish around a hundred books a year, most of which are audio because of my job.
Subscribe for more reviews and articles on what I’m reading.
Like the Five-Minute Iliad, this series will cover Homer’s other famous poem, but in fewer installments. Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
I am using the Butler translation. Subscribe to follow along.
Lorem ipsum, et al
Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.
My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys.
Find my video reviews on YouTube.
I finish around a hundred books a year, most of which are audio because of my job.
Subscribe for more reviews and articles on what I’m reading.