Why Odysseus couldn’t just say: ‘I’m home’

By Stephan Blum, Research Associate, Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval Archaeology, University of Tübingen

Warning: this article contains spoilers for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

Ten years at Troy. Ten more lost at sea. When Odysseus finally reaches Ithaca – in Homer’s poem and again, played by Matt Damon in Christopher Nolan’s new film – he doesn’t walk through the door and say who he is. He lies. He invents a stranger’s life story. He tests his wife Penelope (played by Anne Hathaway), his father, even his old nurse before he lets any of them see him as himself. For a man who has spent 20 years trying to get home, he is remarkably reluctant to arrive.

That reluctance…

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