The Odyssey Is About Becoming Ourselves

Why Odysseus’ journey is also our own

Odysseus meets Argos — Home is not merely where we return, but where we are recognised.

The Odyssey is usually described as the story of a man trying to get home. But this is only half the story. The real journey is not geographical but psychological and moral. Odysseus is trying not merely to return to Ithaca, but to become the kind of man who can return.

This is why, after almost three thousand years, the Odyssey continues to speak to us. We are all trying to find our way home—not simply to a place, but to a life that feels genuinely like our own.

Every encounter presents Odysseus with a different temptation. The Lotus-Eaters invite him to forget who he is. Circe seeks to trap him into surrendering his humanity. The Sirens tempt him with endless fascination. Even after escaping the Cyclops Polyphemus, Odysseus succumbs to the temptation of pride. By revealing his true name, he forgets his true purpose and risks undoing all that he has achieved. Again and again, Homer asks the same question in different forms: what must we refuse if we are to remain true to ourselves?

The greatest temptation of all comes from Calypso. She offers Odysseus what human beings have always desired: immortality, together with eternal youth and freedom from suffering. Yet he refuses. He chooses instead to return to his ageing wife, his uncertain kingdom, and his mortal life. In doing so, Homer suggests that to become fully human is not to escape our condition, but to embrace it. Only by accepting the limits of human existence can Odysseus finally become himself.

From one perspective, it is a baffling decision. Why exchange paradise for hardship? Like the modern philosopher Bernard Williams, Homer intuits that a life derives its meaning not from its length but from being truly our own. We would rather live a finite life that belongs to us than an endless life that does not.

At last, Odysseus reaches Ithaca. But instead of returning as a conquering hero, he enters his own home disguised as a beggar. His wife does not recognise him. His servants do not recognise him. His kingdom does not recognise him. But one creature does.

Outside the palace gates lies Argos, the hunting dog that Odysseus had raised before leaving for Troy. Once magnificent, Argos has been left to grow old on a dung heap. Yet the moment Odysseus approaches, the dog recognises him. Disguised though he is, stripped of every outward sign of rank and identity, his faithful companion sees through it all. Argos wags his tail, lays back his ears, and, having seen his master one last time, quietly dies. In Homer, true recognition has nothing to do with appearances. We are recognised not for what we possess or the roles we play, but for who we truly are.

It is one of the most moving scenes in all of literature because it speaks to one of our deepest longings. We want our lives to amount to something. But we also want to be known and loved for who we are, beneath all our roles, titles, and disguises. Home is not merely where we return. It is where someone knows who we are—and remembers.

Before Odysseus can reclaim his kingdom, he must first reclaim his story. At the court of the Phaeacians, he recounts everything that has happened to him since leaving Troy. By weaving his adventures into a coherent narrative, he recovers not only his past but himself. We make sense of our own lives in much the same way: not merely by living them, but by telling them. There’s a lovely irony here. At the very heart of the Odyssey, Homer hands the poem over to Odysseus himself. Odysseus quite literally rises into the narrator of his own life, before finally heading home.

Perhaps that is why the Odyssey still feels so modern. We, too, leave home, lose our bearings, and become distracted by ambitions, comforts, fears, and false identities. We, too, sometimes wonder how we ended up living the lives we are living.

The Odyssey endures because Homer understood that the longest journey any of us will ever undertake is not outward across the seas, but inward into our hearts.