Considering The Odyssey has its roots in the oral tradition, I probably should have listened to it the first time around. I purchased the audio book of the same edition we were reading for class, and the narrator happens to be Magneto, a.k.a Ian McKellen, but that’s not really important. I just think it’s cool.

Probably the biggest stand out thing to me, listening to Sir McKellen read The Odyssey out loud, is how societal the whole thing is. It’s made particularly obvious because the interactions between people and what those people value and admire are so different from how my peers and I interact and what we value and admire. “Societal” probably isn’t the best word to describe it–but the interconnected-ness of humans is so striking to me.

Audio books are usually just sound to fill the silence for me. I’m fairly sure I don’t know how to go to bed without listening to one anymore. (I’ve listened to the Anne series almost enough times to recite them from memory.) I obviously can’t do this with The Odyssey, since I’m reviewing for the exam, so I make a particular effort to truly listen. As a reader, I skim by a force of habit. Big blocks of text and overbearing descriptions tend to pass my eye. Listening to The Odyssey and trying to focus, however, brought to my attention things that had not initially occurred to me the first time I read.

During the first few books/chapters, Telemachus visits his missing father’s old friends. As is the ancient Greek tradition, hospitality is of paramount importance, and this becomes so much more obvious, listening to The Odyssey. Homer goes into great detail about the homes and feasts of Telemachus’s hosts, describing the grandeur down to every twinkle and shine, to every flavor and spice. It’s kind of like, what a person gives is so much more important than what he or she actually has.

That same logic applies to the value of story telling. Lies are not condemned in this world; Athena, goddess of wisdom, even admires Odysseus for his skillful lies–even if they are to her. What a person says is so much more important than what is actually the case.

This is likely me in this mindset because of preparing for the exam (which is tomorrow [!!!]), but there are so many layers of self-made identity for the characters in The Odyssey (and Margaret Atwood’s almost-modern retelling, The Penelopiad), but that self-made identity is also shaped and molded by outside influence. I think The Odyssey and The Penelopiad are probably among the best (literary) illustrators of dialogical identity from the reading list this year.