The Odyssey: What Homer's Homecoming Teaches About Fate

In Gwendolin Kirchhoff’s reading, the Odyssey tells of a homecoming that has a price: Odysseus loses everything, must in the end entrust himself to his enemy Poseidon, and gets home because he is willing to pay for what he has done. She develops this reading in her fourth conversation with Elisa Gratias for TransitionTV and Manova (2026), starting from Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey, and she marks it herself as a reading of the film (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 14:20; 26:36–26:40; 27:13–28:15). You may know the Odyssey as the adventure of a hero who escapes the Cyclops and sails past the Sirens. This essay follows a different trail: what Odysseus loses on the way home, and what he pays.

#What is the Odyssey about?

The Odyssey is Homer’s epic of Odysseus’ homecoming to Ithaca after the fall of Troy. In German, Odyssee has also come to mean a long, adventurous wandering; German took over both the title of the epic and this figurative sense from the French odyssée in the 19th century (cf. Pfeifer, 1993, entry „Odyssee“). Homer’s opening calls him the man who wandered so far after the destruction of Troy and suffered so much at sea, to save his life and secure his companions’ return (cf. Homer, Odyssee 1, 1–5, tr. Voss). The nymph Calypso keeps him in her vaulted grotto and wishes to have him as her husband (cf. ibid., 1, 13–15), and at home suitors press his wife Penelope to marry (cf. ibid., 2, 85–110). In the end he is carried to Ithaca asleep on a ship, and there Athena gives him the shape of an old beggar (cf. ibid., summary of Book 13).

Gwendolin Kirchhoff sets out the frame like this: the Trojan War lasted about ten years, and Odysseus’ wanderings on the way back to Ithaca lasted ten years too; at the end he has a seven-year relationship with the nymph Calypso on the island of Ogygia (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 10:19–10:43). On the way back he loses all his men and his ship, and at home he first appears as a beggar, while his wife is surrounded by suitors who want her to choose one of them so that he can take over Ithaca as king (cf. ibid., 13:52–14:18). Her own sentence for it is short: “He loses everything.” (ibid., 14:20) And she adds: “And the myth wouldn’t depict what it feels like to lose everything.” (ibid., 14:23)

Of Nolan’s film she says that it took up something from the Odyssey that is not directly portrayed in the Odyssey or in the world of myth (cf. ibid., 08:04–08:15), “namely the emotional experience of Odysseus” (ibid., 08:15). Nolan tells the homecoming as post-traumatic stress disorder, as a brokenness of soul that Odysseus carries with him (cf. ibid., 19:43–19:58). The film mixes some things, such as the Lotus-eaters and Calypso; in its use of flashbacks it is relatively faithful (cf. ibid., 20:02–20:14). To anyone who wants to look into the material more closely she recommends watching the film and reading more afterwards: the wanderings emphasise the cleverness with which Odysseus solves problems, the film the emotional side (cf. ibid., 30:22–30:44).

#Why is Odysseus a complicated man?

For Gwendolin Kirchhoff, Odysseus is a many-layered man, a mixed figure with dark sides and light sides. She recalls that Odysseus is introduced as polytropos, the man of many turns, and that a British translator renders the word as “complicated” (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 14:29–14:39). That translator is the British-American classicist Emily Wilson, whose 2017 translation begins: “Tell me about a complicated man.” (Wilson, 2017, The Odyssey 1, 1; as given in Wikipedia, “The Odyssey (Emily Wilson translation)”, revision of 10 October 2026) Kirchhoff herself says: “You could also say, a many-layered man.” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 14:42) Johann Heinrich Voss, in his German translation, had rendered it as „vielgewanderten Mannes“, the man who wandered far (Homer, Odyssee 1, 1, tr. Voss).

In the film Kirchhoff sees a simplification here. Nolan, she says, makes the Greeks look entirely black and the Trojans entirely white (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 20:18–20:27); but the Greeks are mixed figures too (cf. ibid., 21:21–21:26), “Odysseus himself, for one, is a mixed figure” (ibid., 21:26). He has great dark sides and light sides as well, and to simplify that would not fit (cf. ibid., 21:28–21:36). Later in the conversation she says: “But as I said, he is a deeply ambivalent figure.” (ibid., 30:04) He pursues his interests at times very cleverly and almost like a secret agent, she says, and has a thoroughgoing ambivalence (cf. ibid., 30:07–30:19). At the same time he kept a certain respect for divine principles such as Athena, who is always with him (cf. ibid., 14:48–14:59). What kind of cleverness Athena embodies is the subject of the entry on cleverness.

Why do we stay well disposed towards such a man? Kirchhoff asks the question explicitly and notes: not everyone does (cf. ibid., 26:20–26:26). Dante placed Odysseus deep down in hell (cf. ibid., 26:26–26:33). In the Divine Comedy Odysseus (Ulisse) suffers together with Diomedes in a single flame in the eighth ditch, the eighth bolgia, of the Malebolge, among other things for the ruse of the horse (cf. Dante, Inferno XVIII, 1; XXVI, 31–33, 55–63).

#What does Penelope represent in the Odyssey?

Gwendolin Kirchhoff answers with her reading of the film: “We take Penelope, and Penelope stands for the heart.” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 26:40; cf. 26:36–26:40) She says this in answer to her own question of why we remain strangely well disposed towards Odysseus, and she prefaces it by noting that this is how she read the film (cf. ibid., 26:20–26:43).

Homer tells how Penelope holds the suitors off: she asks them not to press for her marriage until she has finished weaving the shroud for the hero Laertes, weaves by day and unravels the work at night, until in the fourth year the suitors catch her at it (cf. Homer, Odyssee 2, 93–110, tr. Voss).

#Why does Odysseus make it home?

In her reading of the film, Gwendolin Kirchhoff names two things when she tells how Odysseus gets home: at the end it is like a kind of surrender that it takes, and he is willing to pay (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 26:36–26:40; 27:13–28:15). At the last he comes without a ship: “And only at the very end does he come, completely without a ship, on a raft, and he has to entrust himself to Poseidon, who is his enemy.” (ibid., 27:13) He has to trust that he will make it across the sea on a raft all the way to Ithaca (cf. ibid., 27:22–27:30). “So at the end it is like a kind of surrender that it takes for him to be able to come home.” (ibid., 27:30)

In Homer this part of the journey runs somewhat differently. At Zeus’ command Calypso provides Odysseus with tools to build a raft; Poseidon sends him a storm that smashes the raft, Leucothea saves him with her veil, and he reaches Scheria, the island of the Phaeacians (cf. Homer, Odyssee, summary of Book 5, tr. Voss). In the end he is carried to Ithaca asleep on a ship (cf. ibid., summary of Book 13). In Homer too Poseidon is his enemy: the seer Teiresias tells Odysseus among the dead that he will not escape the Earth-shaker, who bears him a grudge because he robbed his son of his sight (cf. ibid., 11, 90–103).

At home, Kirchhoff continues, Odysseus clears out the suitors, takes his rightful throne again and from there makes atonement for his fallen companions; he has to pay for that, and he does (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 27:35–27:49). Had he not been willing to do so, in her words, he would not have come home; there is in him a willingness to atone, a Bußbereitschaft (cf. ibid., 27:48–27:56). The old German word Buße, atonement or penance, comes, she says, from paying, that is, paying for something we have done (cf. ibid., 27:56–28:04). The Etymological Dictionary of German derives the word differently: Buße goes back to Germanic *bōt- ‘good’, related to besser, ‘better’, and in the Germanic languages meant above all ‘improvement, reparation’; today it lists the meanings ‘atonement’, ‘fine’ and ‘reparation’ (cf. Pfeifer, 1993, entry „Buße“). To the degree that Odysseus is willing to pay and to return, Kirchhoff says, he makes it home, but it demands enormous trials of him (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 28:04–28:15).

#Why do Odysseus’ men die?

Odysseus’ companions never get home because they slaughter the cattle of the sun god: in the very first lines of the Odyssey Homer names the slaughter of the cattle as the reason the god took from them the day of their return (cf. Homer, Odyssee 1, 7–9, tr. Voss). Earlier the Cyclops Polyphemus had eaten six companions and Scylla had seized six men (cf. ibid., summaries of Books 9 and 12). In the conversation Elisa Gratias asks whether the men perished because they had surrendered to the will of a human being, Odysseus, instead of to the gods (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 35:09–35:48). Gwendolin Kirchhoff disagrees: the men perished above all because they ate the cattle of Helios; they thereby broke a law and perished through that transgression; Odysseus had foretold it to them and could not prevent it (cf. ibid., 35:48–36:22). They had precisely not listened to him and fell through their own fault (cf. ibid., 36:21–36:32). These men were brutal, too, and not simply innocent loyal followers; they all have their own fate (cf. ibid., 36:31–36:53).

That the companions brought about their own ruin, Homer says at the very beginning of the Odyssey (Homer, Odyssee 1, 6–7, tr. Voss, rendered in English):

The warning is in Homer too. Teiresias tells Odysseus among the dead that, though unhappy, they may yet reach Ithaca if, mindful of their homecoming, they spare the herds of the sun god on Thrinacia; if they harm the cattle, he foretells ruin for ship and companions, and Odysseus, should he himself escape, will come home “late, unhappy, and without companions” (Homer, Odyssee 11, 90–115, tr. Voss, rendered in English). Kirchhoff tells the prophecy in a sharper form: Odysseus was told that he could only return home once he had lost all his men, and that means he has to pay an unbelievable price for what he has done (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 25:22–25:40). What Greek tragedy shows about such a decree of fate is taken up, through the example of Oedipus, in the entry on fate.

#What is the inner Ithaca?

The inner Ithaca is an image Gwendolin Kirchhoff uses in comparing Odysseus with Goethe’s Faust, for something that can still call a person back. Just before, she says that Odysseus is spared for other reasons than his companions, because something else is still active in him (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 36:50–36:56). “That is almost Faustian, I would say.” (ibid., 36:56) Faust, too, is a strangely ambivalent figure; one could ask why Gretchen fetches him once more at the end of Faust II, as if a small remnant had survived in him, “his inner Ithaca, so to speak, somewhere there is still something that can call him back” (ibid., 37:17; cf. 37:02–37:24).

In Goethe’s final scene the penitent “once called Gretchen” asks to be allowed to teach the newcomer, who is still dazzled by the new day (cf. Goethe, 1832, Faust II, Act V, Mountain Gorges). The Mater Gloriosa answers her that if he senses her presence, he will follow (cf. ibid.).

Kirchhoff describes the opposite case straight afterwards: “And there are people who have drifted very far, in whom what can call them back is too weak” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 37:24), or they simply no longer hear it (cf. ibid., 37:29–37:31). Her example is Socrates, a view she herself calls unpopular (cf. ibid., 37:31–37:36); the contrast between Heraclitus and Socrates is the subject of the essay Heraclitus vs. Socrates.

#Which life does Odysseus choose in Plato?

In Plato, the soul of Odysseus chooses the life of a plain private man. Gwendolin Kirchhoff recounts the scene from Plato’s Republic: in a near-death experience a man named Er saw the regions beyond and there saw how people choose their own life’s fate, through a lot from Lachesis (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 28:21–28:47). Odysseus, she says, next chooses a very simple life as an ordinary man, with no wish to stand out politically any more (cf. ibid., 28:47–28:59).

The scene is the myth of Er at the end of the Republic (cf. Plato, Republic X, 614b–621b). Plato tells that the soul of Odysseus happened to come last to the choice; “mindful of its former toils and dangers, it was free of all ambition”, went about for a long time in search of the life of a private man far from affairs of state, finally found it, despised by all the others, and took it with great joy (Plato, Republic X, 620c–d; German edition Berlin [1940], p. 406, rendered in English).

Kirchhoff calls this an interesting image of the state Odysseus had reached within himself: something in him had been worn away, including ego, and not only pride but also a dark, abysmal drive to get things done that exhausts every possibility open to it (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 29:15–29:47). Odysseus had learned, she says, and in the end simply wanted to lead a simple life (cf. ibid., 29:12–29:16). Originally, she recalls, he did not want to go to Troy at all; he was fetched, could no longer refuse, and went along with the whole thing (cf. ibid., 29:51–30:02).

#What is the law of Zeus?

In the law of Zeus there is, for Gwendolin Kirchhoff, at least an inviolability of the other, including the stranger. Nolan’s film, she says, presents the law of Zeus as hospitality, as the first form of international law; that may be a bit of a misinterpretation (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 15:04–15:20). But at least it contains “an inviolability of the other, including the stranger” (ibid., 15:24).

Homer knows this Zeus. When Odysseus asks the Cyclops Polyphemus for a little hospitality or a small gift, such as strangers are usually offered, he appeals to him: “And Zeus is an avenger of strangers who plead for help, / Zeus the hospitable, who guides the sacred guests” (Homer, Odyssee 9, 266–271, tr. Voss, rendered in English; cf. summary of Book 9).

According to Kirchhoff, this law is broken in the war over Troy itself. It is undermined by ruses and personal interests, because the attackers are looking for a pretext against Troy; with the Trojan Horse they used the religious feelings of the Trojans to get into the city, and that contains a great deal of violation of reverence for the gods (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 15:29–16:04). “Something is broken there.” (ibid., 16:03) Nolan, she says, links this with the idea of the Sea Peoples, who are supposed to have invaded during the Bronze Age collapse of civilisation; Kirchhoff asks how this break in civilisation began and answers with the law of the stronger (cf. ibid., 16:06–16:31): “This law of the stronger, which applies wherever there are no inviolable spaces left.” (ibid., 16:31) A certain law of the stronger existed before, she adds; what is new is the collapse of the inviolability of spaces (cf. ibid., 16:37–16:43).

#What do we do for the sake of power?

What we do for the sake of power is, for Gwendolin Kirchhoff, the question laid down in the Trojan War: whether we do literally everything or whether there are limits. A particular spirit was laid down in that war, she says, one that occupies the West (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 18:01–18:22): “What do we do for the sake of power? That is the question.” (ibid., 18:10) She unfolds the question further: “Do we do literally absolutely everything? Or not? Are there limits? Do we recognise inviolable spaces?” (ibid., 18:14)

These are questions the film faces, she says, and it treats them a bit flatly (cf. ibid., 18:22–18:27). As an example she mentions that Nolan has Odysseus say that the age of bronze is coming to an end; no character would talk like that, it is meant to educate (cf. ibid., 18:26–18:42). At the end of her thought stands the question of what could connect us or no longer connects us, and of the doom of power (cf. ibid., 19:03–19:10), which she also calls a contradiction: “Which, however, is a contradiction that we cannot resolve.” (ibid., 19:10) And: “Fate has run its course in such a way that this has happened.” (ibid., 19:13)

The figure of the one whom power cuts off from his roots is described in the entry on the uprooted powerful. How myth stands beside the concept as a way of grasping reality in its own right is set out in the entry on myth and logos, and what world opens up in the mythical in the essay The Mythical. Whether the Greek gods are still an experiential reality today is the question of the essay Are the Gods Among Us?.

#What can we learn from Homer today?

From Homer or the Greeks, Gwendolin Kirchhoff says, we can also learn that we cannot resolve the opposites and the polarity of things. Elisa Gratias asks her what a person today can take away from Homer’s hero’s journey and from Nolan’s film when they are neither a hero nor a warlord (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, “Das Schicksal ist größer als wir”, 30:45–31:17). Kirchhoff begins her answer with the great image that fate is greater than we are (cf. ibid., 31:19–31:47). Sometimes, she says, the wisest answer is to do nothing, to refrain from interfering and first to perceive something and hold oneself back (cf. ibid., 33:04–33:30). Then she comes to “what we can also learn from Homer or the Greeks” (ibid., 33:30): that we cannot resolve the opposites (cf. ibid., 33:36–33:42).

She names two ideas that stand against this: a dissolution into pure reason, which she calls Hegelian and which she also finds in the vision of a future in which an AI will one day run civilisation rationally, and an emotional dissolution into a final peace (cf. ibid., 33:42–34:07). Neither exists; we will always notice different emotional movements in ourselves (cf. ibid., 33:59–34:10). Then she addresses the listener, “if you give up wanting to dissolve the opposites and can accept the change of things as it really is” (ibid., 34:11), and invites them to sense what that does when there is nothing to end and nothing to change (cf. ibid., 34:17–34:37). “There is no struggle, there is no problem to solve.” (ibid., 34:38) “That is a different stance towards being.” (ibid., 34:46) Whatever life then brings to you, she says, is your task (cf. ibid., 34:51–35:05).

At the end of the Odyssey, in Kirchhoff’s reading, stands a man who comes home because he was willing to pay, and whose soul, in Plato, finally chooses nothing more than a simple life. The epic leaves you with a question: where is your inner Ithaca, and what in you still listens when it calls you back?

#Sources

• Dante Alighieri (c. 1321). Divina Commedia. Inferno, Canto XVIII, 1; Canto XXVI, 31–33, 55–63. Italian text: Project Gutenberg eBook #1000, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1000
• Goethe, J. W. von (1832). Faust. Der Tragödie zweiter Teil. Act V, Mountain Gorges (Bergschluchten). Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta. Text: Project Gutenberg.
• Homer. Odyssee. German translation by Johann Heinrich Voss. Cited from Homer: Ilias / Odyssee, Munich 1976, text at zeno.org, http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Homer/Epen/Odyssee (Book 1, 1–15, p. 441; Book 2, 85–110; Book 9, 266–271, p. 558; Book 11, 90–115, pp. 585–586; summaries of Books 5, 9, 12 and 13).
• Kirchhoff, G. & Gratias, E. (2026). «Das Schicksal ist größer als wir» Gwendolin Walter-Kirchhoff über Christopher Nolan und das Leben (“Fate is greater than we are”) [Video, in German]. TransitionTV, YouTube, 18 September 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smlQFizE8Lg All time stamps refer to this TransitionTV version; the Manova version Die Odyssee (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjtervR5tR4) has different times.
• Pfeifer, W. et al. (1993). Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, entries „Buße“ and „Odyssee“. Digitised and revised version in the DWDS, https://www.dwds.de/wb/etymwb/Bu%C3%9Fe and https://www.dwds.de/wb/Odyssee
• Plato. The Republic, Book X, 614b–621b (myth of Er), here 620c–d. Cited from the German edition Platon: Sämtliche Werke, Band 2, Berlin [1940], p. 406, text at zeno.org.
• Wikipedia (2026). “The Odyssey (Emily Wilson translation)”, revision 1379541838 of 10 October 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odyssey_(Emily_Wilson_translation)
• Wilson, E. (trans.) (2017). Homer: The Odyssey. New York: W. W. Norton.