fate and free will

One of the most prominent motifs in the scenes of Odysseus’s homecoming is the idea of testing people to prove their loyalty. When he arrives back to Ithaca, Odysseus doesn’t tell anyone who he really is until he tells a long, elaborate lie about his identity and tries to suss out their allegiance to him first. He and Athena collaborate in testing the suitors, and Odysseus goes to meet them, disguised as a beggar, to see who will offer him some of their food. But passing the test doesn’t promise safety: Athena makes it clear that even the suitors who give Odysseus food will still be slaughtered in the end. The scene is confusing, but it brings out one of the most interesting aspects of The Odyssey: the complex relationship between individual free will, fate, and the gods’ influence.

Personal morality clearly plays an important role in the Odyssey. The importance of being kind to strangers, for example, is a driving force in the main plot: the suitors are the bad guys because they are abusing Telemachus’s hospitality, and in Odysseus’s travels, we hear the saying “every stranger comes from Zeus” more than once. Individual choices are also significant: the sailors met their fate because “the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all.” It’s clear throughout the epic that Homer doesn’t feel any sympathy toward them, and the reader shouldn’t either: not only did they deserve what they got, they did it to themselves, too. Odysseus’ identity as a hero stems not just from his exploits in the Trojan war but also from his bright ideas, determination, and loyalty to his beloved wife Penelope: heroic traits because they are moral, and require great personal willpower to achieve.

But the impact of free will is complicated because “doing the right thing” doesn’t always depend on doing what’s compassionate or logical, but instead on following the will of the gods. And the will of the gods is often fickle. While marooned on the island of Helios, Odysseus’ men are starving, and only eat one of the sacred cattle as a last resort. They promise Helios a great temple with heaps of sacrifices once they return home: but he kills them all at sea anyway. When Poseidon returns from Ethiopia to see Odysseus safely returned home, he has no qualms about transferring his wrath to the innocent Phaeacians instead, and after a quick and lighthearted brainstorming session with Zeus, he not only turns their best sailors to stone but surrounds each port with mountains that will destroy the Phaeacians’ entire livelihood as well.

There’s also the question of fate, which at times seems to be driven by the gods and at times beyond even them. From the beginning of the Telemachiad we see Athena carefully molding Telemachus into the hero that best completes her story, and she does the same thing to Odysseus, helping him to succeed outright and twisting events to make the story more exciting behind the scenes. The reader might wonder how much of either person’s heroism is their own and how much is Athena’s creation. But then there’s also the numerous prophecies that come true regardless of how much people try to thwart them, and that not even the gods can change. In the case of the unfortunate Phaeacians, Zeus and Poseidon smiting them fulfilled a prophecy they had known for years, and the gods weren’t even aware of it.

All of these elements make Odysseus’s hero’s journey more complex: It’s hard to tell how much of his success is due to his own actions, and how much is Athena, or fate, or those same influences acting on his unfortunate adversaries. It all lines up to make Odysseus the hero, but at the same time, it’s a little harder to root for him when it seems like so much of his success isn't really his own doing.