The Odyssey is the old-school original when it comes to epic poems, written by Homer in approximately 675 – 725 BCE. It depicts 10 years of King Odysseus’ life as he tries to get home to his wife and child, and it’s full of blood-pumping battles, painful detours, tear-jerking moments, and even humour. As a form of entertainment, it refreshingly strays from the formulaic and perfectly summed up plotlines of modern books, and the never-ending movie sequels churned out in our media.
Going into the book, I assumed I would be faced with Shakespeare-like prose that would require some slogging through to understand, but was pleasantly surprised to find out the poem was translated into modern, readable English. It reads like any other fantasy novel on the market but with a unique charm that comes with ancient literature: The Odyssey doesn’t have a cookiecutter storyline and wasn’t bound by modern conventions. As an epic poem it defies many of the literary rules of today, such as requiring a defined beginning, climax, and resolution.
Although Odysseus is a larger-than-life hero, he’s relatable in that he’s far from perfect. He isn’t concerned with integrity; he’s a man who’ll lie, cheat, and steal to get what he wants. This cunning is what makes him a hero, not his honorable actions. He’s a man who’s quick on his feet, able to talk his way out of the trickiest of situations. However, his arrogance is a weakness that ends up getting him cursed by Poseidon, making his approximately two week voyage span a painful 10 years.
The Odyssey is a story that would’ve been told around campfires long ago, listeners hanging onto every word as the orator described how Odysseus returned to his wife, slaying all the suitors who were disrespecting his spouse, drinking his wine, and eating his food. They would be in an uproar over Odysseus telling a cyclops his name was “Nobody,” causing the cyclops to foolishly cry out that “Nobody” was attacking him. It begs the question: what happened to the epic poems of today?
The answer could lie in a place one might least suspect. The live streaming of video games on websites like Twitch might just be the new fire that stories are told over. While watching a playthrough of the first Dark Souls game, I realized that it had many of the conventions of an epic poem along with a commentary element from the streamer playing it. There was an invocation to a muse, supernatural elements, a plot that involved a vast fictional world, and deeds performed by the hero that required superhuman abilities. Maybe epic poems haven’t disappeared completely; maybe they’ve just evolved with the times.
In a cultural landscape that pushes us to continually disregard the old and embrace the new, it’s easy to overlook the classics in literature as dull, boring, and irrelevant when they can be anything but. I encourage anyone with a love of literature to explore The Odyssey and find out first-hand why older generations fell in love with it.
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
