Odysseus Reaches Ithaca but Won't Admit Who He Is: What Is He Avoiding by Lying?
He has already set foot on his homeland, yet he first invents a Cretan identity and won't tell the truth even to his most loyal swineherd — because the real question isn't whether he can get home, but whether he can still recognize himself.
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Coming home makes him less like himself
Both hosts notice that the closer Odysseus gets to Ithaca, the less sure of himself he becomes. He wakes on the beach, sees a bit of mist, and immediately concludes the Phoenicians have plundered him and flown into a rage. Earlier he wept for dead companions, but he never doubted himself; now he doesn't know who he is, and fears others won't recognize him as Odysseus. The hosts read these two books as the beginning of a "rebuilding": to drive off the suitors he must first become Odysseus again, and he isn't there yet.
Athena deliberately makes him fail to recognize home
Athena spreads mist over Ithaca so that Odysseus cannot recognize his own land. The text says she does this to tell him how things stand and to keep him unrecognized by his wife, family, and neighbors until he exacts payment from the suitors. The two discuss whether this is a kind of delay: if he recognized his homeland the moment he landed, he would rush straight home, and she doesn't want that to happen. When the mist finally clears and he kisses his own country's soil, the image is read as a moment of inner clarity.
He lies to flatter Athena
When Odysseus meets Athena disguised as a shepherd, he immediately fabricates a Cretan lineage. One reading: he has actually recognized her, or at least knows this can only be a god, and so performs deliberately, because Athena loves to watch him deceive. Sure enough she laughs, reveals herself, and says they are both tricksters, that no one can scheme and speak like him, while she is famed among the gods for cunning. The hosts think he is flattering her, letting her believe she has won the exchange — which doesn't contradict his "breakdown," because the moment he meets a person his cunning switches back on.
Making him ugly tests who recognizes his character
Athena says she will wither his skin, strip his hair, dress him in rags so that everyone who sees him shudders, and veil his eyes so he appears ugly to the suitors, his wife, and his son. The two find this choice strange: she could just as easily have turned him into a handsome stranger. They propose a reading — if this is an inner journey, perhaps he fears that he really is this ugly, unlikable figure, and Athena's disguise forces him to face that fear.
Ithaca has stalled; only the swineherd still works
On rereading, they notice a mass of detail all saying "no one is doing anything": the swineherd guards the pigs alone, builds his own dwelling alone, Laertes and Penelope give no help, and he even has to buy a slave. All of Ithaca is stagnant and dysfunctional, unable even to convene an assembly. The household survives not because there is no one who needs managing, but because one overlooked man has filled that position, loyally, year after year. The hosts read this as a question about who keeps everything running.
The swineherd warns him: they won't believe you
Odysseus says he has news of Odysseus, but the swineherd answers: his wife and son won't believe a traveler who brings news, vagrants always lie to scrounge a meal, and there's no reason for them to tell the truth. Penelope receives these men and weeps as she listens, but it was never real. The two see this as planting a seed: when he finally does reveal himself, his family may simply not believe him. The swineherd also says he grieves for Odysseus more than for his own family, and would rather call him brother — the hosts joke that Odysseus would probably find that a little awkward.
His lies are making excuses for himself
In the Cretan story Odysseus invents, he says people wanted him and Idomeneus to sail for Troy, "we had no choice, their will constrained us strongly." The hosts press: is he saying he had no choice? Is he excusing himself for leaving Ithaca back then, abandoning an infant, a wife, and parents? In the story he also says that as soon as he returned he left again, that he disliked farming, housework, and raising children, and preferred seafaring and war. The two think these details don't look casually invented but like a version he has told himself many times.
He could reveal himself at once but chooses to keep circling
Athena has already told him the swineherd is loyal; he doesn't need an elaborate test. The hosts imagine what a relief it would be to simply say, "It's me, Odysseus, let's deal with the suitors." But he chooses not to, and stays on the margins. Athena also points out that anyone else would have asked about Penelope and Telemachus, and he hasn't. The two offer several explanations: he enjoys the game, or doesn't know how not to lie, or is afraid of the answer.
In their own words · checked verbatim
the closer that he gets to home, the greater his insecurities are.
I believe he would snap into his cunningness like the minute he came across someone he just goes into that mode.
this household has continued to run not in the absence of the person to run the household, but in the replacement of that person with an ignored person who has nonetheless like continued his duty, hoping against hope like for all of these years.
he's trying on identities. He's like putting on these hats.
Glossary
- xenia
- The ancient Greek code of guest-friendship and hospitality: a host must entertain a guest before asking who he is.
- theodicy
- The question of why the gods permit suffering and injustice; here, Odysseus asking Athena why she won't help him.
- liminal
- In a transitional, marginal state, belonging neither here nor there.
How to listen
Readers who have read the Odyssey or are interested in narrative and identity; anyone who wants to hear "lying" read as a psychological mechanism rather than a plot device.
The closing chit-chat about "which scenes a movie should film," which has nothing to do with the textual analysis.