Summary: Book 5
But if you only knew, down deep, what
pains
are fated to fill your cup before you reach that
shore,
you’d stay right here. . . .
(See Important Quotations Explained)
All the gods except Poseidon gather again on
Mount Olympus to discuss Odysseus’s fate. Athena’s speech in support
of the hero prevails on Zeus to intervene. Hermes, messenger of
the gods, is sent to Calypso’s island to tell her that Odysseus
must at last be allowed to leave so he can return home. In reply,
Calypso delivers an impassioned indictment of the male gods and
their double standards. She complains that they are allowed to take
mortal lovers while the affairs of the female gods must always be
frustrated. In the end, she submits to the supreme will of Zeus.
By now, Odysseus alone remains of the contingent that he led at Troy;
his crew and the other boats in his force were all destroyed during
his journeys. Calypso helps him build a new boat and stocks it with
provisions from her island. With sadness, she watches as the object
of her love sails away.
After eighteen days at sea, Odysseus spots Scheria, the
island of the Phaeacians, his next destination appointed by the
gods. Just then, Poseidon, returning from a trip to the land of
the Ethiopians, spots him and realizes what the other gods have
done in his absence. Poseidon stirs up a storm, which nearly drags
Odysseus under the sea, but the goddess Ino comes to his rescue.
She gives him a veil that keeps him safe after his ship is wrecked.
Athena too comes to his rescue as he is tossed back and
forth, now out to the deep sea, now against the jagged rocks of
the coast. Finally, a river up the coast of the island answers Odysseus’s
prayers and allows him to swim into its waters. He throws his protective
veil back into the water as Ino had commanded him to do and walks
inland to rest in the safe cover of a forest.
Summary: Book 6
That night, Athena appears in a dream to the Phaeacian
princess Nausicaa, disguised as her friend. She encourages the young
princess to go to the river the next day to wash her clothes so
that she will appear more fetching to the many men courting her.
The next morning, Nausicaa goes to the river, and while she and
her handmaidens are naked, playing ball as their clothes dry on
the ground, Odysseus wakes in the forest and encounters them. Naked
himself, he humbly yet winningly pleads for their assistance, never
revealing his identity. Nausicaa leaves him alone to wash the dirt
and brine from his body, and Athena makes him look especially handsome,
so that when Nausicaa sees him again she begins to fall in love
with him. Afraid of causing a scene if she walks into the city with
a strange man at her side, Nausicaa gives Odysseus directions to
the palace and advice on how to approach Arete, queen of the Phaeacians, when
he meets her. With a prayer to Athena for hospitality from the Phaeacians,
Odysseus sets out for the palace.
Analysis: Books 5–6
Our first encounter with Odysseus confirms what we have
already learned about him from Menelaus’s and Helen’s accounts of
his feats during the Trojan War and what Homer’s audience would already
have known: that Odysseus is very cunning and deliberative. The
poet takes pains to show him weighing every decision: whether to
try landing against the rocky coast of Scheria; whether to rest
by the river or in the shelter of the woods; and whether to embrace
Nausicaa’s knees (the customary gesture of supplication) or address
her from afar. The shrewd and measured approach that these instances
demonstrate balances Odysseus’s warrior mentality. Though aggressive
and determined, he is far from rash. Instead, he is shrewd, cautious,
and extremely self-confident. At one point, he even ignores the
goddess Ino’s advice to abandon ship, trusting in his seafaring
abilities and declaring, “[I]t’s what seems best to me” (5.397).
In each case, he makes a decision and converts thought to action
with speed and poise. In his encounter with Nausicaa, a telling
example of his skill in interacting with people and charisma, his subdued
approach comes off as “endearing, sly and suave” (6.162).
While these inner debates are characteristic
of Odysseus, they are in some ways characteristic of the Odyssey as
a whole. Unlike the Iliad, which explores the phenomena
of human interaction—competition, aggression, warfare, and the glory
that they can bring a man in the eyes of others—the Odyssey concerns
itself much more with the unseen universe of the human heart, with
feelings of loneliness, confusion, and despair. Not surprisingly,
Homer introduces the hero Odysseus in a very unheroic way. We first
find him sulking on a beach, yearning for home, alone except for
the love-struck goddess who has imprisoned him there. Although not
entirely foreign in the Iliad, this sort of pathetic
scene still seems far removed from the grand, glorious battles of
the first epic. Even without the linguistic and historical evidence, some
commentators consider the stylistic divergence of scenes like this strong
evidence of the separate authorship of these two poems.
Commentators are split in their interpretation of Calypso’s extraordinary
speech to the gods. Some see it as a realistic, unflinching account
of the way things work in the patriarchal culture of ancient Greece:
while men of the mortal world and Zeus and the other male gods can
get away with promiscuous behavior, society expects females to be
faithful at all times. Others understand Calypso’s diatribe as a
reaction to this reality. With this interpretation, we find ourselves
naturally sympathetic to Calypso, who is making a passionate critique
of social norms that are genuinely hypocritical. The question of
interpretation becomes even trickier when we consider the relationship
between Penelope and Odysseus. The poet seems to present Odysseus’s
affair with Calypso without rebuke while looking askance at Penelope’s
indulgence of the suitors, even though her faith in Odysseus never
wavers. If we understand Calypso’s speech as a criticism of these
patriarchal norms, we can see how the text presents two contrary
attitudes toward sexual behavior, and Calypso’s speech seems to
point out and condemn the unfair double standard that Homer seems
to apply to Penelope.
