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Book 23
Woman—your words, they cut me to the core!
Who could move my bed?
This quote from Book 23 by Odysseus illustrates Penelope’s cunning. To test him and confirm his identity, she demands their bed be brought out into the hall, something she knows is impossible, to gauge his reaction. Penelope’s trick enables her to trust that this is indeed Odysseus and not a ploy by the gods to test her loyalty. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Theme: The Power of Cunning over Strength and Quotes by Symbol: The Wedding Bed.
There was a branching olive-tree inside our court,
grown to its full prime, the bole like a column, thickset.
Around it I built my bedroom, finished off the walls
with good tight stonework, roofed it over soundly
and added doors, hung well and snugly wedged.
Then I lopped the leafy crown of the olive,
clean-cutting the stump bare from roots up,
planing it round with a bronze smoothing-adze—
I had the skill—I shaped it plumb to the line to make
my bedpost, bored the holes it needed with an auger.
Working from there I built my bed, start to finish,
I gave it ivory inlays, gold and silver fittings,
wove the straps across it, oxhide gleaming red.
In Book 23, Penelope asks her maids to carry their wedding bed into the hall. Only the real Odysseus, who constructed the bed, would know that this is impossible—the bed was built around, and within, an olive tree, and therefore can’t be moved.
There’s our secret sign, I tell you, our life story!
Does the bed, my lady, still stand planted firm?—
I don’t know—or has someone chopped away
that olive-trunk and hauled our bedstead off?
Odysseus’s outrage continues in these lines from Book 23. Their wedding built was built incorporated into an olive tree; it is study, fixed, and unshakeable, just like their marriage. Because moving it would be impossible, Odysseus assumes the bed has perhaps been chopped down and destroyed. Asking whether the bed, symbolic of their marriage, is intact allows Odysseus to discern whether Penelope has been unfaithful, and confirms for Penelope that Odysseus is exactly who he says he is.
Book 24
At those words
a black cloud of grief came shrouding over Laertes.
Both hands clawing the ground for dirt and grime,
he poured it over his grizzled head, sobbing, in spasms.
Odysseus’s heart shuddered, a sudden twinge went shooting up
through his nostrils, watching his dear father struggle . . .
In Book 24, Odysseus tests his father Laertes to confirm his loyalty before revealing his identity. He pretends to be someone who met Odysseus years prior. At the mere mention of his son’s name, Laertes begins sobbing, and Odysseus’s heart breaks; he immediately throws his arms around Laertes.
