The Odyssey’s Pagan Despair

The Odyssey film was masterfully produced and performed but, even with its Christian veneer, was pagan and depressing. It’s been much discussed in countless reviews how the film is not entirely faithful to Homer’s original ancient epic, having been redemptively updated, with less cruelty and more human dignity, at least relative to the original.

In the film Odysseus has a form of PTSD and regrets the sacking of Troy, amid slaughter, rape and pillage.  In the original poem, he has no such regret and is proud of his conquest, as anyone in his position would have been in the pagan ancient world. The strong defeat the weak, guided by the gods.

Throughout the film, the “peoples from the sea” are cited repeatedly as a savage threat. Only at the end does Odysseus realize that he and the other Greeks, in their destruction of Troy, are themselves the “peoples from the sea.” It’s a moment of rueful self-realization, the enemy, they are us, that’s more Reinhold Niebuhr than Homer.

The film does not include nearly the vast amount of wanton slaughter and, at least by our standards, gross immorality of the original poem. But there’s still enough pagan ethos to make the story dispiriting. Odysseus and the Greeks sacked Troy for nothing but vainglory and avarice.  Odysseus eventually returns home but his whole crew is killed, as foretold by a blind prophet in Hades and a witch. Zeus kills them, while starving, for slaughtering and eating cattle that belonged to the sun god, Helios.

The crew, before their cruel deaths, were briefly turned into pigs by the sorceress, who lured them with seemingly sumptuous hospitality, in one of the more disturbing scenes.  More disturbing is his visit to Hades, where, following the witch’s guidance (who heeds a witch?), he performs a blood sacrifice to summon his dead comrades and the blind prophet up from beneath the ground.  Their plight resembles damnation, from which no escape seems clear. Is everyone damned?

Occasionally the goddess Athena, a disapproving young woman, appears at the side of Odysseus. She is chiding but not necessarily helpful. The gods are powerful and capricious but not necessarily good. The “hospitality of Zeus” is often cited as a cultural norm but seems more ritualistic than kind or moral.

Upon his return, Odysseus slaughters his wife’s self-serving and conniving suitors, whose wickedness perhaps invites it.  In the film, Odysseus and his Queen Penelope leave their kingdom in a gracious exile as their son takes the throne, since Odysseus is guilty over his past.  In the poem, Odysseus does not feel guilty but returns to his throne, with peace ensured by the goddess Athena. So at least that.

Guilt, remorse, and possible redemption are present in the film but not in Homer’s poem, as these concepts would have been odd in pagan antiquity. But the film includes enough of the original story to convey a despairing and purposeless pagan ethos.  Yes, Odysseus in the poem triumphs, but to what end? Won’t he still ultimately wind up in the misery of Hades with his former comrades?

Some critics have decried the film as “woke” for making it more palatable to modern audiences with some Christian influenced expectations for human compassion and redemption. From their perspective, seemingly, the original story of blood and glory, unmediated by grace and mercy, was preferable. The Odyssey is part of our Western patrimony, after all.

This expectation is part of a wider unfortunate trend that celebrates “Western Civilization” as a tribal identity while minimizing the Hebraic and Christian moral developments around human dignity that offer the West’s redemptive qualities.  Some even stray into racial and ethnic definitions of “The West” while deriding the universalist ideals, informed by Christianity and Judaism, that make the West truly great.

The implication of this perspective is that the West, with its wealth, technology and relative stability, is for us but not for others. This view disregards that the West’s best qualities are bequeathed by divine grace, not our own merits.

When he was politically active, Patrick Buchanan often quoted from Thomas Babington Macaulay’s 1842 poem Horatius about the mythological ancient Roman hero who defended a bridge against great odds: “And how can man die better / Than facing fearful odds, / For the ashes of his fathers, / And the temples of his Gods.”

This rhetoric about fighting and dying for our “gods” is bestirring to some, especially in our current tribalistic age, when existential combat against perceived enemies is much esteemed.  This was the world of Homer and Odysseus. Some want this to be our world, where some defend “The West” or whatever cultural identity they prefer.

But the true strength of the West is adherence not to “our gods” but the universal God of all humanity who establishes universal law and universal morality, with an invitation to universal redemption from universal sin, amid universal human dignity and universal purpose.  This universal God with universal standards and universal hope is missing from The Odyssey because He was largely unrecognized in pagan antiquity, although He was certainly still present and presiding.

“Where shall we have men of a universal spirit?” Oliver Cromwell once asked his parliament.  “Everyone desires to have liberty, but none will give it.”  A world of hope and redemption will seek liberty, dignity and hope equally for everybody.

Such a universal spirit was missing for Odysseus, although the film lends a slight veneer, if not enough to alleviate pagan despondency. Men and women of a universal spirit are needed today more than ever.