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Rosemary SutcliffThe Wanderings of Odysseus
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
In a short Prologue, the author summarizes the story of the decade-long siege of Troy, which began when Paris, the Trojan prince, took Helen, the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus, away with him to Troy, and Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon amassed a large Greek army to sail to Troy to get her back. In the 10th year of the war, the Greek hero Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, devised the ploy of the wooden horse. The Greeks built a huge, hollow horse out of wood and hid some of their best fighters inside. They then left the horse on the beach of Troy and feigned a retreat. When the Trojans brought the horse inside their walls, the hidden Greek soldiers waited until nightfall before emerging from a hidden trap door to open the gates of Troy to the rest of the Greek army. Troy was sacked, and the Greeks sailed home, but while some of the Greeks came home quickly and safely, others faced difficulties on the way. In this novel, Rosemary Sutcliff describes the perils Odysseus encountered “on the long sea-road back to Ithaca” (7).
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Sacker of Cities”
Shortly after setting sail from Troy with his 12 ships, Odysseus comes to the coastal town of Ismarus in Thrace. The people of Thrace were allies of Troy during the Trojan War, so Odysseus’s men sack and plunder the town. But they spare the home of Maron, the son of Apollo, and he rewards them by giving them many gifts, including 12 jars of excellent wine. Odysseus’s men drink all night on the shore, celebrating their success. At dawn, men from the sacked town attack them while they are drunk and vulnerable. Odysseus’s men run back to their ships, but over 70 of them are killed.
A fierce storm blows Odysseus’s ships off course for nine days and nine nights. At last they reach a pleasant island. Odysseus sends three men to scout the terrain, and when they do not return he goes out with two other men to search for them. He finds that the locals have fed his men the fruit of the lotus flowers growing on the island, which causes them to forget about going home. Odysseus drives his men back to ship, ties them up, and sails out to sea.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Cyclops”
After seven days at sea, Odysseus and his fleet reach another island. They beach their ships in a sheltered bay and Odysseus, taking some of Maron’s wine with him, goes to explore the island with 12 handpicked men from his crew. They find a cave with folds for sheep, full of cheese, milk, and whey, but the cave’s owner is a gigantic Cyclops named Polyphemus, the one-eyed son of the sea god, Poseidon. Polyphemus comes home with his sheep and rolls a huge stone across the entrance to the cave, trapping Odysseus and his men. When Polyphemus sees the intruders, Odysseus asks him for “kindness and hospitality” (12), but the Polyphemus scorns this request, killing and eating two of Odysseus’s men.
When Polyphemus goes to sleep, Odysseus considers killing him, but realizes that if he does so he and his men will not be able to get out of the cave because of the stone covering the entrance, which only the Cyclops is strong enough to move. In the morning, Polyphemus eats two more of Odysseus’s men and takes his sheep to pasture, leaving Odysseus and his men trapped inside the cave. Odysseus devises a plan to escape. He and his men sharpen Polyphemus’s staff, a large log of olive wood, and harden the tip in the fire. When the Cyclops comes home, Odysseus hides the sharpened stake and offers the Cyclops some of the wine they brought with them. Polyphemus becomes very drunk and asks Odysseus what his name is, promising to reward him. Odysseus, thinking ahead, responds that his name is “Nobody.” Polyphemus promises that he will eat “Nobody” last, and then falls into a drunken sleep.
Odysseus and his men remove the sharpened stake from its hiding place, heat it in the fire, and plunge the point into Polyphemus’s one eye. Polyphemus screams in pain and calls for help, but when the other Cyclops ask Polyphemus who is harming him, he can only respond that “Nobody is harming me! Nobody is killing me by his cunning” (16). The other Cyclops assume that Polyphemus is sick and go back to their caves.
The next morning, Polyphemus, now blind, removes the stone from the cave entrance to pasture his sheep. He stretches his hands out over the entrance to prevent his prisoners from escaping. But Odysseus ties his men to the bellies of the sheep, tying himself to the largest ram. Polyphemus feels the backs of each of the sheep as they pass, and Odysseus and his men, hidden underneath, go undetected. Odysseus and his men return to the ships, loading the sheep onboard. But as they sail away, Odysseus cannot resist the opportunity to gloat, and he calls out to Polyphemus, telling him that it was Odysseus who blinded him. Polyphemus prays to his father Poseidon, asking him to punish Odysseus. He throws a boulder at Odysseus’s ship, but it misses its mark.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Lord of the Winds”
Odysseus and his men next come to the island of Aeolus, the Lord of the Winds. Aeolus houses and entertains Odysseus and his men for a month, after which he gives Odysseus a bag containing all the winds except for the west wind so as to blow Odysseus more speedily home. For nine days and nights the ships sail toward Ithaca, and Odysseus himself stands at the steering oar. On the 10th day, with Ithaca in sight, Odysseus goes to sleep. But his men are curious about the bag from Aeolus. Thinking that Odysseus may be hiding some treasure that he does not want to share, they open the bag. The imprisoned winds, now released, blow the ships far from their destination. Eventually they are driven back to the island of Aeolus. But Aeolus will not help Odysseus again, believing that the gods must hate him.
After sailing for six more days, Odysseus and his fleet reach another island. Odysseus sends three men inland as scouts, but they discover that the island is inhabited by gigantic, man-eating creatures. Two of the scouts escape back to the ships, pursued by the island’s brutal inhabitants, who gather on the cliffs and hurl boulders into the harbor to sink Odysseus’s ships. Odysseus manages to save only his own ship; the rest of his fleet is drowned. Odysseus realizes that he is being punished by Poseidon for blinding his son Polyphemus.
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Enchantress”
Odysseus and the survivors of his crew reach a heavily forested island, with a cloud of reddish smoke rising from the middle of the island. He sends 22 men under the command of his relative Eurylochus to investigate the smoke. That evening, Eurylochus returns alone. He explains that he and his men found a house surrounded by tame wild animals with a beautiful woman weaving inside. The woman invited the men to enter the house, but Eurylochus, feeling suspicious, hid himself outside and watched as the woman gave each of the men a drink and then turned them into pigs by touching them with a wand.
Odysseus arms himself and goes to confront the enchantress alone. On the way, the messenger god, Hermes, meets him and gives him a plant to protect him from the magic of the enchantress, whose name he says is Circe. At Circe’s house, Odysseus is given the same treatment as his men, but because he has the plant Hermes gave him, he does not change shape. Circe recognizes Odysseus. She restores his men to their human form and then invites Odysseus and his crew to stay with her.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Land of the Dead”
After staying with Circe for a year, Odysseus decides it’s time to resume his journey. Circe tells Odysseus that he should visit the prophet Tiresias of Thebes in the Land of the Dead to find out everything he needs to know to make his journey. Odysseus follows Circe’s instructions to reach the Land of the Dead. He sacrifices a ram and a ewe in a trench, and the shades of the dead are able to speak to him by drinking from the blood. Odysseus meets many shades, including the shade of his mother, but he does not let any of them taste the blood until he has spoken to Tiresias. Tiresias tells Odysseus about the journey that awaits him, warning him to refrain from eating the cattle of the Sun Lord when he reaches the island of Thrinacia and also revealing that when he arrives in Ithaca he will find his home full of strangers trying to steal his wife and possessions.
Odysseus then speaks with his mother and with several of the other shades, including the heroes Agamemnon and Achilles, who were with Odysseus at Troy. He also sees the shape of Elpenor, one of his men, who died when he fell from the roof of Circe’s house and has not yet been buried. Odysseus promises to bury him.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Sea Perils”
Odysseus returns to Circe’s island and buries Elpenor. Circe tells him about the sea perils awaiting him—namely, the Sirens, the Wandering Rocks, and Scylla and Charybdis—and gives him instructions on how to overcome each of these perils. Odysseus escapes the Sirens, whose song lures sailors to their death, by blocking up his men’s ears with wax so that they cannot hear their song (though Odysseus, wanting to hear the song, has his men tie him up to the mast so that he can listen without being able to jump overboard).
To avoid the Wandering Rocks, Odysseus must sail through the narrow strait between the whirlpool (Charybdis) and the many-headed monster (Scylla). Following Circe’s instructions, Odysseus orders his men to row as fast as they can, sticking closer to Scylla, who devours six of his men, but Odysseus knows that this sacrifice is unavoidable.
Odysseus and his men arrive on Thrinacia, the island of the Sun Lord, Hyperion. Remembering Tiresias’s warning, Odysseus makes his men promise not to touch the cattle of Hyperion. A storm keeps Odysseus’s ship beached for many days, and soon he and his men run out of food. While Odysseus is praying at a shrine, his men break their promise and eat the sacred cattle. After six days on the island, Odysseus and his men set sail again, but they are promptly wrecked by a storm as punishment for eating the cattle of Hyperion. Only Odysseus, who did not eat the meat, survives, clinging to the ship’s mast. He floats for nine days and nine nights before arriving on the island of the nymph Calypso.
Prologue-Chapter 6 Analysis
Rosemary Sutcliff positions The Wanderings of Odysseus, though not part of a series, as a companion of her novel, Black Ships Before Troy, published two years earlier, in 1993. Sutcliff alludes to this earlier book in the prologue to The Wanderings of Odysseus where she writes that “The story of the siege of Troy I have already told in another book” (7). While The Wanderings of Odysseus is a retelling of Homer’s Odyssey (hence its subtitle, The Story of the Odyssey), Black Ships Before Troy (subtitled The Story of the Iliad) is—at least in part—a retelling of Homer’s Iliad. Both books showcase Sutcliff’s ability to repackage dense ancient mythical narratives for younger audiences. While The Wanderings of Odysseus covers the same ground as Homer’s Odyssey, Sutcliff does not narrate the story in the same way or the same order as the ancient Greek epic. Notably, the Odyssey begins in mediis rebus, or “in the middle of things,” the practice of beginning the narration of a story in the middle rather than the beginning. The Odyssey opens with the hero, Odysseus, trapped on the island of Calypso, nearly a decade after the fall of Troy. The story of Odysseus’s wanderings up until that point are narrated by Odysseus himself to the court of Alcinous, the king of the Phaecians, in Books 9, 10, 11, and 12 of the epic. Sutcliff, on the other hand, narrates the story of Odysseus’s wanderings in a more linear fashion, beginning with Odysseus’s departure from Troy and following him through his adventures until he returns home and kills the suitors of his wife, Penelope.
Sutcliff’s novel explores themes popular in Greek mythological narratives and presents them in a manner that is digestible to elementary-aged readers. The theme of Heroism and the Quest for Home, of course, is at the very heart of the novel. The heroic “homecoming” was an important mythological motif, and the homecomings of the heroes who fought at Troy—and the adventures they encountered along their journeys—were especially well-known (the ancient Greek word for “homecoming” was nostos, reflected in the title of The Nostoi, an epic tale of the homecoming of the Greek heroes who fought at Troy). The most famous homecoming of all was that of Odysseus, recounted in Homer’s Odyssey, an ancient Greek epic written down around the eighth century BCE. In Sutcliff’s retelling, as in Homer’s ancient epic, Odysseus is consumed by his desire to return home. He even goes to the grim Land of the Dead to speak to the prophet Tiresias of Thebes so that he can ask him how to make the journey home successfully.
The heroic courage with which Odysseus faces various dangers on his journey home—including fantastical monsters such as the Cyclops, the Sirens, and Scylla and Charybdis—as well as his famous cunning define him as a character and a hero. In many ways, the most formidable obstacle Odysseus faces comes from his crew. In the first chapter, Odysseus finds that some of his men, having eaten of the lotus fruit, have “no thought of ever going home” (10), and he must drag them to the ship by force. When Aeolus gives Odysseus the bag of the winds, it is Odysseus’s crew who opens the bag, hindering Odysseus’s—and their own—homecoming. And on the island of Thrinacia, it is again Odysseus’s men who undermine their homecoming efforts by eating the sacred cattle of the Sun Lord Hyperion.
The Relationship Between Gods and Mortals defines the world in which Odysseus’s wanderings take place, highlighting the emphasis the novel places on The Role of Fate in the lives of its characters. While Odysseus does have several divine friends, including Athene, the goddess of war and wisdom, and Hermes, the god of messengers, he also makes one important divine enemy: the sea god Poseidon. The Cyclops Polyphemus calls on Poseidon to punish Odysseus after he blinds him, and it soon becomes clear that Poseidon has granted his son’s request. Aeolus drives Odysseus away from his island when he realizes that he is “hated by the gods” (21), and Odysseus himself realizes after he loses all but one of his ships that “blue-haired Poseidon had hearkened to the prayer of the blinded Cyclops, his son” (23). In the world of Sutcliff’s novel—as in the world of Homer’s epics—the gods are deeply involved in human affairs, further pointing to the role of fate as an underlying theme in the narrative. In the Land of the Dead, the prophet Tiresias tells Odysseus in detail of the dangers he has yet to face “if maybe [he] escape[s] the fate of [his] men” (35). Sure enough, what Tiresias says does come to pass, and his prophetic vision of Odysseus’s fate foreshadows the events in the subsequent chapters.
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