Screenshot of Matt Damon’s Odysseus from the trailer of the Nolan Odyssey film (fair use)

(2) THE WRATH OF ODYSSEUS (OR DADDY’S HOME)

The Return of the King.

More formally labelled along the lines of the Homecoming of Odysseus and the Fate (or Slaying) of the Suitors – although personally I think that people missed the chance to mirror the wrath of Achilles from the first line of the Iliad, hence my title.

Alternatively, in the parlance of Nolan’s film, Daddy’s home – and he’s here to hand out some spankings!

While the Wanderings of Odysseus is the adventurous soul of the Odyssey – “I am become a name for always roaming with a hungry heart” – his Homecoming is its emotional core. Home is where the heart is – certainly Ithaca is where the heart of Odysseus is, as well as that of the Odyssey.

The Wanderings of Odysseus are his adventure; the Homecoming of Odysseus is his quest.

It’s not simply a matter of coming home or even coming home after war, it is a restoration akin to resurrection – a restoration not so much of good over evil, but even more fundamentally of law or order over chaos.

As such, it is arguably of more thematic importance than even the adventurous odyssey, as the latter is, after all, just in the nature of titillating entertainment or divertissement.

This is reflected in that it is literally at least half the books of the Odyssey – Books 13-24 – and more if you count Books 5-8, which arguably you should. The entire Odyssey is set in the time of the Homecoming, at the tail end or in the very last year of its ten years, much like the Iliad is only a tiny segment of the ten years of the Trojan War or its events. Everything before that are essentially flashbacks, stories within the story – including the odyssey part of the Odyssey, the wanderings of Odysseus from Troy to Helios’ cattle, are told by Odysseus himself to the Phaeacians just before he returns to Ithaca.