Comedy in... The Odyssey?

While reading the Homer’s Odyssey, I was struck by the lack of humor. Maybe the ancient Greeks didn’t make jokes? But no, I was confident that Greece was, in fact, one of the birth places of comedy (I may be wrong though). So, what is up with Homer? It would appear the Homer simply dislike humor. That lack of comicality was made even more obvious when I started to compare The Odyssey to the Conan Brothers’ screenplay adaptation, O’ Brother, Where Art Thou? This adaptation is exceedingly funny, to the point where nearly everything is a joke, though not in a bad way. When I looked back, however, I realized that there were instances where I did laugh at the Odyssey, or at least I would have if the events were intended to be comical. In fact, I think the Odyssey has a great potential for comedy. When Odysseus is stuck on Calypso’s island, every day he sits on the sands, crying for his home and his family. This image invokes sympathy, but that sympathy is offset by the irony in how Odysseus then proceeds to sleep with Calypso every night. Even more ironic is the fact that a major part of Penelope’s existence in the novel her fidelity to Odysseus, who sleeps with nearly every woman he meets. Later, when Odysseus meets Nausicaä, there is an interesting scene in which Odysseus contemplates hugging her knees and asking for hospitality, as he has done with many of other people he has met. However, the issue is that Odysseus is stark naked, and does not want to frighten Nausicaä by touching her. We see this (alleged to be) great leader stuck in a supremely awkward situation, and that disparity might well be thought of as humorous. Much later, when Odysseus finally makes it to Ithaca, Athena disguises the beach from him. Instantly he curses those who brought him there, assuming that they dropped him on some strange land and stole all the treasure that they gave him in the first place. This is, however, not the case. The reaction to arriving at the place he has been striving toward for the last ten years or more years is completely the opposite of what we would expect, creating a potentially humorous scene. What do you guys think? Is there unintentional humor there, or am I looking too deep into it? Are there some other scenes that you though could be funny? I would be happy for any comments.

Homer's Influence

            We start with the Odyssey because it is a classic version of the hero’s journey. The word “odyssey” has even come to mean long and arduous wanderings in our day and age, which is, as far as I can tell, not what the word originally meant in ancient Greece. However, in this blog post I wish to air the idea that Odysseus was not the usual hero for the ancient Greeks. The conflict between the diction and events of the story and Homer’s take on them suggests that the Odyssey could have been written as an attempt to argue against the quintessential hero of that time.

In his invocation of the muse, Homer says, “Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns …” (first page). The phrasing of the description of Odysseus as “the man of twists and turns” could easily be interpreted as more of an insult than a complement, but Homer only uses it to praise Odysseys. Homer could have used any phrase, so why choose “the man of twists and turns”? I don’t think that it is because that phrase was already praised by the Greeks, because then the translator would not have used a phrase with those strange connotations. The reason could be that Homer attempts to make that neutral attribute into a virtue through his poem. If that is the case, Homer has succeeded, as we in the current day think that cunningness is a highly valued characteristic for the ancient Greeks. The ancient Greeks, however, could have believed that craftiness was secondary to physical prowess. In today’s age, we believe that deception was greatly prized by the Greeks because Homer believed that it should be, and the prevalence of Homer’s Odyssey causes us to base our image of those Greeks on his story.

I have no real proof for that idea. Everything is based on guesswork and embarrassingly little research, but I mainly wrote this to see if it has any possibility of being true. The basic argument is that cunningness was not highly respected by the ancient Greeks, but Homer created a story in which it is raised to the level of a virtue, and because we base our views of those ancient Greeks on his story, we believe that they valued cunningness. I would be glad to hear any responses.