Homer begins his tale of Odysseus this way: “Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost.”
Few works have captured the imagination like The Iliad and The Odyssey. The timeless story of The Odyssey has been repackaged for a modern audience in Christopher Nolan’s recent movie. His retelling is at its best when it’s faithful to Homer’s classic and veers off course with its modern additions. Picking up the book is well worth it. First-time readers may appreciate Emily Wilson’s fast-paced and readable translation, or take their time in the more poetic translation by Robert Fitzgerald. But what makes Homer’s epic poem a classic cornerstone of Western literature?
Odysseus is presented as a complex mystery. He’s the genius behind the triumph over Troy. The glory of the victory falls to his ingenuity and cleverness. And yet, The Odyssey opens with him far from home, broken and enslaved, while his wife’s suitors pilfer his home.
Homer’s Odyssey stands the test of time because it recognizes the enigma—the mystery—of humanity’s glory and misery. The phrase “Tell me about a complicated man” resounds through history. Retellings of Odysseus’s story keep coming because every generation wrestles with the same question about the complexity of being human.
Glory and the Misery
In the ancient Greek worldview, fame and glory were desired above all else. The Iliad displays the drive to accomplish glorious exploits in battle and earn fame and recognition. Heroic deeds were viewed as the way to achieve a type of immortal life—forever remembered in the songs of poets and hearts of people.
Odysseus earned this glory and honor. His fame, he claims, “extends to high heaven.” The poets and musicians sing his praise. He earned the glory the Greeks prize.
Ironically, though, nearly every time Odysseus’s praise is sung in The Odyssey, it ends in tears and grief. His wife, Penelope, cries out to stop these songs of Odysseus’s fame because they break her heart. His glorious fame, after all, came at the cost of losing his family and home.
But it isn’t only Odysseus’s wife who responds to the songs of his glory with tears. Odysseus himself comes to know the shallow folly of the “glory” he earned. The price is severe: unrelenting suffering for 19 years.
In The Odyssey, even those who obtained the most glory in The Iliad are now languishing in the underworld. One of these dead heroes laments that he would exchange the glory he’d earned to simply be a living servant. This glory is hollow and means little in light of the present misery.
Getting Glory Wrong
Homer taps into the human longing for glory and the fact that, left to our own devices, we misunderstand this glory. Longing for glory is part of what it means to be human. We have eternity etched on our hearts (Eccl. 3:11). We long for eternal glory to bask in. But this glory isn’t our own, and we aren’t allowed to define it. The history of humanity is a history of misidentifying the glory we hunger for—and how to achieve it.
When we exchange the glory of the eternal God for our fame and accomplishments, we’re always left in misery and suffering, even when we achieve the glory.
When we exchange the glory of the eternal God for our fame and accomplishments, we’re always left in misery and suffering, even when we achieve the glory.
The Odyssey asks the right questions about humanity: What is this complicated being? How do we face suffering and survive? What is the key to the good life?
It even presents a partially right answer: True glory isn’t found in war or achievements; it’s found in the joy of home. Odysseus isn’t complete until he wins back his wife and son, accepts the good limitations of home, and gives up fighting. Satisfaction is found in a faithful marriage and family.
Nolan’s Odyssey affirms this but adds the message of overcoming past trauma and living in hope for the future: “Give up the fight, give up control, and live.”
God’s Definition of Glory
This presentation of the good life, though, is incomplete. Homer’s vision falls short of the glory God has designed humans for. So does Nolan’s. The biblical concept of man’s glory is far different from the ancient Greeks’ and its modern retelling.
The Bible tells us about a complicated man—Jesus Christ—who ventures far from the splendors of heaven (Phil. 2:1–11). The God-man doesn’t journey as One who wanders and is lost. He comes to seek and save lost, complicated humanity (Luke 19:10).
The biblical concept of man’s glory is far different from the ancient Greeks’ and its modern retelling.
As one of the church fathers says, “The glory of God is a living man.” God’s glory is this man: Jesus Christ. In Jesus, humanity’s glory and misery collide and find their resolution. Our glory and satisfaction in life can only be found in knowing him. Our hunger for glory and satisfaction is ultimately a hunger for God himself.
The Odyssey recognizes what Herman Bavinck calls the “greatness and miserableness of man.” But Homer cannot resolve this complexity as God does in his Word. As Bavinck reminds us: “The Scriptures know of both, and they shed their light over man and over mankind; and the contradictions are reconciled, the mists are cleared, and the hidden things are revealed. Man is an enigma whose solution can only be found in God.”
Odysseus was an enigma, a complicated man who raised questions about life. The ancient poets and modern filmmakers can only pose these questions and give half answers. But God speaks over us the path and promise of living in the “freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21).
The Gospel Coalition