Time in the Odyssey

This article may be considered as a continuation of the previous one. As I want to share some thoughts about such a notion as Time in the Odyssey, a perfect epic which depicts a long full of adventures returning home.

It is common knowledge, the Odyssey is written by Homer, an outstanding Ancient Greek poet. We can see an imaginable marble portrait busts of Homer in such famous places as the British Museum or the Louvre Museum. 

Homer, the Louvre Museum

The Odyssey is an epic, a long narrative poem, the events of which take 40 days. The wanderings of the main character, a Greek king of Ithaca, named Odysseus, lead the poem along a route where divine inspiration is woven into the human fabric and experience of the poem.

Such a literary technique as a frame story is obviously used in the Odyssey. The frame begins with an invocation to the Muse by a poet, who claims he saw nothing, though he simultaneously summons inspiration from Zeus’s daughter who saw everything (Zhukovsky, 4). The frame story leads readers from the first story into a few smaller and bigger ones within it. For example, Odysseus, in Books 9-12, recalls his numerous adventures on the land of Phaeacians (Zhukovsky, 84-130). Penelope, a queen of Ithaca, sees a dream in Book 19 (Zhukovsky, 194). Telemachus, their son, arrives at Sparta and listens to the heroic stories about his father in Books 3-4 (Zhukovsky, 18-47).

Odysseus and Calypso 

On the one hand, the temporal framework certainly adds to the epic, adding depth to the story, it gives readers more details and vivid facts about the main and secondary characters. However, on the other hand, these flashbacks and flash-forwards often interfere with the flow of the epic. The resulting twisting of the chain of events adds intricacy and more depth to the story. There are examples in many parts of the epic, such as Books 9-12 (Zhukovsky, 84-130), where Odysseus tells all his stories in order to form a bond with Alcinous, a king of Phaeacia, to learn the path to his home, and maybe get some help from the king.

Odysseus in the Underworld

Evidently, time plays a significant role in the Odyssey. While visiting the Underworld Odyssey’s journey is told within a timeless zone untouched by the sun, and the horizon upon which Athena holds back the night overlaps with the boundaries of the hero’s trials, just as the edges of the earth where the Cimmerians live are, like Penelope and Odyssey’s endless night, untouched by the sun (Zhukovsky, 108). Readers also meet Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn. She crosses the sky to mark the beginning of a new day’s or book’s adventures.

All in all, it took Odysseus 20 years to return home. Readers should understand that the time significance in the epic contributes to the making myth by depicting the fact that in order to become a true hero, a man must overcome and experience a lot of trials, troubles and win victories.