After the Trojan War, Greek soldiers returned to their hometown in succession, and only the resourceful Odysseus drifted at sea. At the beginning, after Odysseus led his fleet to leave Troy, he first arrived in the island country of Cakones and was attacked by local people. Drifting to another coast, some crew members ate the "fruit of forgetting their worries" and then wandered back and forth, not wanting to go home again.

So Odysseus tied the crew to the boat and went on. Soon he arrived at the island of the nomadic giant and was imprisoned in the cave of Polyphemus, a man-eating cyclops. He brutally killed six of Odyssey's teammates. The cyclops was Poseidon's son. Odysseus stabbed the giant's one eye with a sharpened huge piece of wood, tied the living companions one by one under the ram's stomach and escaped from the hole.

From then on, Poseidon turned against him, making waves all the way, deliberately hurting people. They fled to Fengshen Island, and Fengshen gave them a bag to put all the headwinds in, so that they could go home smoothly. Unexpectedly, when the ship was approaching home, the sailors thought that the pockets were filled with gold and silver treasures, and they opened the pockets when Odysseus slept. As a result, all kinds of Fengshen roared and blew them to Fengshen Island. Fengshen refused to help them again, and they let the boat drift to Giant Island.

The giants living here sank 11 ships of the fleet with huge stones, and they also used harpoons to catch drowning people to satisfy their hunger. Odysseus' ship was spared because it didn't dock. He led the sailors to the island of the witch Kalke, who turned some of his companions into pigs. Thanks to God's blessing, Odysseus defeated the witch and was treated by the witch. In order to find out the way home, he traveled to hades with the help of the witch, and learned his future from the prophecy of the prophet Tiresias.

Then Odysseus met the spirits of many old comrades-in-arms and talked with Agamemnon, the ghost of Achilles. After that, they continued to sail and successfully passed the enchanting bird island with attractive songs. Odysseus lost six companions from Schula, the Poseidon, and Calybudis, the Great Vortex.

On the island of Apollo, Zeus sank the ferry with thunder because his companions ignored Odysseus' warning and slaughtered the cow, which angered Zeus. Most people died, and he was washed to the island of Calypso mythology alone and placed under house arrest for seven years.

At the same time, more than 1 aristocratic children lurked in Odysseus' palace and proposed to his beautiful wife penelope. They feasted all day and consumed his fortune to the fullest. Penelope has always been loyal to her husband. In order to refuse the suitor, she used an excuse to prepare the funeral clothes for her father-in-law, and then she could remarry after she finished weaving. So she weaved during the day and dismantled it at night, repeating it back and forth to delay the time. Telemarcos, the son of Odysseus, was secretly instructed by Athena, the goddess, and left home to find his father.

He first went to Pyrrhus to find Niesto, but he didn't get any news. Finally, he learned from Menelaus that Odysseus was still alive on the island of the goddess Calypso mythology. The gods on Mount Olympus were very sympathetic to Odysseus' fate, and sent an angel Hermes to ask Calypso mythology to let Odysseus go back. The goddess reluctantly sent Odysseus away from the island on a raft. Odysseus sailed at sea for 17 days, and the mountains in his hometown were faintly visible, but unfortunately Poseidon found him and smashed his raft.

With the help of the gods, Odysseus drifted to the island of Scria. Nausicaa, the daughter of the king, did laundry at the seaside according to Athena's instructions. She found Odysseus and took him back to the palace. The king hosted a banquet for him. During the banquet, the singer sang the story of the Trojan War, including Odysseus' own heroic deeds. After listening to it, he could not help but hide his face and cry. At the request of his master, he told about his experiences in the past ten years. King Alounos was greatly moved by Odysseus' account and sent a boat and many sailors to send Odysseus home.

Athena turned Odysseus into a beggar in rags, and then asked him to meet his son Telemarcos at the shepherd hunter's house. Telemarcos told his father about the family, and the father and son discussed the plan of going home for revenge.

The next day, father and son returned to the palace one after another, and Odysseus, in rags, was insulted by begging alms from the suitor. That night, penelope was told that Odysseus was still alive, and only the old wet nurse who washed Odysseus' feet recognized his master from the scar on his foot. The next day, Odysseus took advantage of the contest in the hall to kill all the suitors, and the family finally got together.

Extended information:

This paper attempts to provide a new understanding perspective for Odysseus, which tells a person's journey home, that is, to go deep into the specific situation faced by Odysseus to discover the driving force behind it. Here, they are just two recognizable concepts: humanity and a sense of destiny; The former is reflected in the multiple identity confirmation experienced by the protagonist, while the latter gains externalization and independence through the presence of God's will.

What this article wants to explain is that in the world of Odyssey, these two concepts complement each other, and it is this unique integration that provides eternal spiritual reference for people in different time and space.

Aristotle's summary of the plot of Homer's Odyssey is not long: "There was a man who was away for many years, and a god kept staring at him, leaving him alone; The situation in his family fell to this point: some suitors consumed his family wealth and murdered his son; He came home from the storm, recognized some people and attacked himself. His life was saved and his enemies died in his hands. "

However, this seemingly simple plot, expressed in 12,15 magnificent lines by Homer, constitutes one of the most important classic texts in western history, and can be traced back to many important motifs in the western spiritual world. They are constantly echoing in different time and space, which makes the Odyssey always have a lasting charm.

This article was born under such circumstances: a modern China reader, a young man who is still wet behind the ears, and a woman with homesickness complex finally read Homer's poems by chance, and wanted to write their own feelings. She can't distinguish various doctrines and schools in detail, and she hasn't figured out where her vision belongs, so she has to try her best to stick to the text and face Odysseus' world directly.

First, the two-way structure

Before I begin to enter, I have to briefly introduce the structure or clues of the Odyssey. They will be related to my later narrative, even if the predecessors have said it many times.

There are generally several views that the Odyssey has a two-way structure. One is that Odyssey includes Odysseus' return to his home and Telemarcos' outward search until the two lines overlap at a certain point to start a new plot. This is easy to see from the structure of the book Odyssey, that is, after the gods agreed to allow Odysseus to return home, the story began with his son Telemarcos-the first four volumes of the epic were given to him.

Volume 5 to Volume 12 * * * Volume 8 is about Odysseus' roaming abroad. From Volume 13, they meet until * * * completes the epic in Volume 24. There is also a view that Odysseus has a multiple two-way relationship with a god, a suitor and nature (storm). Aristotle's another explanation of the dual structure of the Odyssey is that "the better people and the worse people get the opposite ending".

This paper also thinks that the Odyssey has a two-way structure, but it is slightly different from the previous views. Standing at both ends of the structural line are neither father and son, nor Odysseus and many objects, but a vocabulary that can be regarded as a state: home and wandering. Odysseus, the wanderer, is eager to be a man in his home, and the people in his home are also eager to receive the wanderer. The reunification of the two sides in the process of returning home depends on mutual identity confirmation, that is, discovery and being discovered (or testing and being tested), which constitutes the two-way structure of Odysseus' story of returning home.

The gods have played an important role in the smooth development of these two directions. They represent a kind of inevitability and ensure the significance of the destination of returning home-in this case, the significance of home. If we look at the volume structure of The Odyssey from this perspective, we can understand that the 24 volumes of the book are only divided into two parts. The first 12 volumes tell about a lost state and the re-search of identity when people and wanderers in their homes are separated, and the last 12 volumes tell about the necessary mutual confirmation when people and wanderers in their homes are reunited.

the necessity of this structural division in this paper lies in that by transforming "homeland" and "displacement" into a state that serves as the background of Odysseus's "returning home", two important factors that contributed to the realization of this "returning home" can be highlighted (as shown in the figure). This enables us to understand Odysseus' ten-year experience in the situation he faces, instead of looking for some confirmation or analogy in Odysseus' world with our own experience or experience.

II. Postscript

By analyzing the two opposite states of "homeland" and "exile" with the logical clue of "returning home", we have separated two key elements from Odysseus' journey: the confirmation of identity and the presence of God's will. In the Odyssey, we can see such a strange blend: not only is the world of God not incompatible with the world of man, but God has also begun to "delegate power" to mankind-even the heroic heroes who yearn for immortality and transcendence have begun to gradually confirm their qualities, weaknesses and relationships as human beings.

However, the significance of this kind of confirmation of human identity should not be over-amplified. It does not mark the awakening of the so-called "human subjectivity" consciousness, but it is only a hazy foreshadowing, or the end of a waking dream. Odysseus, who has an unnatural trust and dependence on life, probably can't understand Socrates' famous saying: "Life without inspection is not worth living"-his wit is used in the past, present and future: learning lessons, learning widely and preventing being deceived, but not in life itself.

In this drama of life, God is still present and speaking, and "Odysseus listens to his heart and rejoices" (24: 545). From this perspective, whether the protagonist of the story is at home or wandering outside is basically secondary. They are just a shell and a symbolic ceremony. In the Odyssey, this ceremony involves the hero's transition from god to man, and it can also be expressed in other forms.

However, just as all ceremonies can only show a little touch on the theme that surprises them, Odyssey does not focus on specific knowledge, it is just to enlighten, leaving the infinite interpretation to future generations to explain. If this paper can also add a faint ray of starlight to the Odyssey and its already shining universe, it will achieve its purpose.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia-Odyssey.