Story and Telling

The Odyssey does not begin at the beginning. It opens in the tenth year with the hero missing, spends four books on his son, and then — halfway through — hands the story to Odysseus himself, who narrates the famous adventures as a flashback over dinner. These are the poem's two clocks, drawn against each other.

THE TELLING — 24 BOOKS, IN READING ORDERThe TelemachyBook I–Book IVCalypso to ScheriaBook V–Book VIIIThe wanderingsBook IX–Book XIIIthacaBook XIII–Book XXIV“Tell us your story” — the poem jumps back ten yearsSTORY TIME — TEN YEARS, IN THE ORDER THEY HAPPENEDThe wanderingsyears 0–3 · twelve ships lostSeven years on Calypso's islandnothing happens — and the poem passes over it in a few sentencesthe whole poem's presenttense: about forty days012345678910years after the fall of Troy
Two clocks, badly out of step. Nearly the whole poem happens in about forty days at the far right of story time; the adventures everyone remembers are a four-book flashback; and the seven years that take up most of the decade are passed over in a few sentences, because nothing happens in them — which is exactly what being stuck feels like.

Why start in the tenth year?

Starting in the middle is so standard now that it has a Latin name — in medias res — and the Odyssey is where the technique is learned from. The gains are worth spelling out. Beginning at the end of the story means the poem opens on consequences rather than events: a house being eaten, a boy with no father, a woman out of delaying tactics. It also lets Homer do something no chronological telling could — put the monsters in the hero's own mouth.

That choice has a cost the poem seems to enjoy. Everything in Books IX–XII — the Cyclops, the witch, the dead, the Sirens — reaches us as a story told by a man with a strong interest in being impressive, to hosts he wants ships from. The poem has already spent two books establishing that this particular narrator lies beautifully and often. It never resolves the question, and the best readers of Homer have argued about it ever since.

The voyage in chronological order

Rearranged the way it happened, rather than the way it is told:

  1. year 0Troy falls; twelve ships sail (Book IX)
  2. year 0Cicons, Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops (Book IX)
  3. year 1Aeolus; the Laestrygonians destroy eleven ships (Book X)
  4. year 1A year with Circe (Book X)
  5. year 2The house of Hades (Book XI)
  6. year 2Sirens, Scylla, the Sun's cattle — the last ship lost (Book XII)
  7. year 3Cast up on Ogygia (Book V)
  8. year 10Released from Ogygia; wrecked; taken in on Scheria (Book V)
  9. year 10Put ashore on Ithaca, asleep (Book XIII)

See also the journey map for the same voyage as a route, and Ten Years, One Day for what Joyce did with this structure.