Resolving the Identity of Odysseus:
A journey of self-discovery through the breaking of oneself.
…I can see it now
Your ship destroyed, your men destroyed as well.
And even if you escape, you’ll come home late
And a broken man-- all shipmates lost,
Alone in a strangers ship--
(The Odyssey, by Homer, trans. Robert Fagles, p. 253, book XI, line 127-31)
This is one of several mentions of Odysseus returning home a broken man. There are different ways we could interpret this ‘break’. Literally, he could come home with broken appendages. Psychologically, he could come home with post-traumatic stress. Amnesia would very well be a form of breaking a man. Although, Odysseus is referred to twice as “looking for all the world like an old and broken beggar” (Odyssey, book XVII, line 220 and book XXIV, line 173) this points out that he does not suffer a physical or literal break, these are merely illusory aesthetics.
There are certain clues, however, that illustrate a cognitive break. The fact that you is italicized in the passage contributes to this. Even if you escape death, you won’t escape ego-death. Taken this way who he is will be broken and he will no longer be the man he was before. The most dramatic example of a complete ego change that comes to mind is of Phineas Gage. After surviving an accidental shot through the skull with a railroad spike his personality shifted dramatically. The resulting personality was a super-aggressive and angry individual who was no longer, in essence, the person he once was. But what could cause such a change in a person lacking the intense environmental pressure of deforming one’s brain?
To understand what, how, and to what degree changes affect a person’s true character we have to identify what qualities determine someone’s true identity. This is more than just a name or even the qualities of the person’s “soul”. Other factors go into discerning the person’s being. The combination of all these factors is what truly defines a person and indicates what actions the person is potentially liable to take. It is these three items that determine the identity of a person:
- Environment and how it influences and dictates your actions.
- Past decisions, observations, and the consequences of previous actions.
- The present cognition of a person or the deciding mind. The true ego.
Environment is the one factor which we have the most and least control. Environment is something that certain individuals can choose and manipulate. However, environment also indiscriminately hurts and destroys. Environment will never be fully under our control. As such, we cannot choose invariably what consequence any location has upon us, but we can understand the general process that follows our actions in a given location. That is why Achilles could determine his two diverging fates in relation to two clear locations. He could stay in Troy and die young, or return to Phthia to live a long life. Odysseus, likewise, depends on being in Ithaca to become the person he longs to be, The King of Ithaca, and all that it entails to be king of Ithaca (family, land, and title).
We see throughout the Odyssey many transformations the environment forms in the labels given to Odysseus. From king before leaving for the war in Ithaca, to commander in the Achaean army at Troy, to admiral of a fleet on the journey home, to captain of a single ship lost at sea, to an estranged sailor held captive, to guest in Phaeacia, and broken beggar in Ithaca, eventually back to King of Ithaca. His present or temporary character changes to accommodate the environment, but we see a lasting, gradual change developing in his true character. As the story progresses he puts less emphasis on his name and his actions and begins to appreciate how much environment plays in who he is. He longs to return to the person he would be in Ithaca. But after being estranged so long the past, carrying previous identities and environments, start to convolute his perception of who he really is.
The prophecy Tiresias gives to Odysseus helps bring clarity to his journey by presenting the fruition of his true identity with one last voyage in which Odysseus will
“Carry your well-planted oar until you come
To a race of people who know nothing of the sea,
Whose food is never seasoned with salt, strangers all
To ships with their crimson prows and long slim oars,
Wings that make ships fly. And here is your sign—
Unmistakable, clear, so clear that you cannot miss it:
When another traveler falls in with you and calls
That weight across your shoulder a fan to winnow grain,
Then plant your bladed, balanced oar in the earth
And sacrifice fine beasts to the lord the god of the sea,”
(Odyssey, p. 253, book XI, lines 139-48)
Overcoming environmental challenges, the past, and imposter identities is the break that will ultimately define who he truly is and present an opportunity to finally become who he wants to be. Then true ego-death occurs and with it a transformation into the person longed to be. But before he can shed his past identity he must first slaughter the suitors. This is a symbolic illustration of Odysseus overcoming his imposter identities. The suitors lived in his house and ate his food. In book XXII, lines 151-61, we see the suitors even steal and put on his own armor, spears, and shields. As Achilles had to fight Hector wearing his own armor, Odysseus had to fight the suitors who wore his own as well. Each represents a symbolic battles over one’s own self.
Even after overcoming the environmental problems and the false identities, he must still overcome his past to achieve ego-death. It’s only after the trip to bury the oar, the tool Odysseus can identify most with throughout his long journey, that he can begin to bury the identity that he had entrenched as himself. In doing this Odysseus can get closure of his past life and shuffle off the identity that no longer has meaning in the world he has arrived.
To effectively overcome the past a sacrifice of one’s old ego is required, but this is a hard task to pursue and accomplish. It is essentially saying that there are potential versions of you who could result from your present actions and your present self is not worthy of receiving the life to come, because the current you is an imposter identity to your ideal ego. It’s a grand gesture of self-sacrifice to move past you to produce something better than yourself. It would be as if in Prometheus Bound Prometheus had given the choice to mankind of whether or not to be destroyed so as to make way for a greater race and mankind chose to actually sacrifice themselves so that the greater race may begin. With ego-death you are essentially giving up who you have become so that some stranger may live instead of you. This is the ultimate form of altruism. To sacrifice yourself for the masses is relatively easy. To sacrifice yourself for a singular individual is the pinnacle of selfless acts.
But this stranger that lives instead of you is you. You become a stranger to yourself. As a stranger your actions become hard for you to predetermine. It is at this point that one would assume the environment and past would play the largest role in defining you, but those just seem to further muddle the essence of you. You are not merely your past and your environment. There is a willful beast at the heart of you. As a stranger to your actions, however, you can observe the actions you do make objectively. This knowledge of oneself gives an opportunity to see the motives behind our actions. With this we can acknowledge who we really are by dispensing of the means and ends which conflict with who we want to be—our ideal selves.
But identifying what we don’t want to be does not elucidate exactly who we should be. This lack of clarity into what identity should follow makes this transformation a scary and lamenting ordeal, even if it is the pinnacle of desire. There was a certain level of comfort in the non-ideal world which the characters had become accustomed. Penelope describing her dream in book XIX, lines 605-624 illustrates this point with the sadness she suffers over the slaughter of her geese. She had begun to define herself in large part with the presence of the suitors that flooded her home, and the removal of these suitors, while fulfilling her desires, was jarring to her defined identity. This also helps explain Odysseus’ actions in being so coy with his family, mainly Penelope and Laertes. Once the veneer of who you were is removed, there is an emptiness of character that is hard to instantly fulfill. The stranger Odysseus becomes enables him to use deception as a defense mechanism to protect himself from this identity he has lost in an attempt to try and feel out how this environment will impact his newly unfolding ego.
But who Odysseus becomes from here remains to be seen. This return home cost him a large part of himself. But to fill this void he is given a great amount of freedom. The limits constraining his evolving ego are now confined to the limits of his ideals and imagination.
