The Odyssey

Symbols & Motifs · The Odyssey

Recurring objects and images — and what they carry.

1. 01

   The olive tree bed

   Odysseus built his marriage bed by cutting the bedroom around a living olive tree, so one leg is still rooted in the ground. It cannot be moved without destroying it. In a poem made entirely of drifting, disguise and shifting names, it is the one fixed point, and it is the secret that finally proves who he is. The marriage is rooted the way the bed is rooted.

2. 02

   The bow

   A test disguised as a contest. The bow is heavy and old and only its owner can string it, so the trial of strength is really a trial of identity. The moment Odysseus bends it, Homer compares him to a musician fitting a new string to a lyre, which turns an act of violence into something practised and easy, and tells you the killing is already decided.

3. 03

   The shroud

   Penelope weaves a burial cloth by day and unpicks it by night for three years. It is a perfect image of her situation: work that must never be finished, mourning that must never conclude, a delay dressed as duty. It is also proof that her mind works exactly like her husband's.

4. 04

   The scar

   A boar wound from a hunt in his boyhood, and the only thing about Odysseus that twenty years and a goddess's disguise cannot alter. Identity in this poem is not something you declare, it is something written on the body and recognised by people who knew you before you were famous.

5. 05

   The sea

   Poseidon's element and the poem's constant antagonist. It separates, delays, drowns, and refuses to be reasoned with. Every disaster comes across water and every home is on land. When Tiresias tells Odysseus his final task is to walk inland carrying an oar until he meets people who mistake it for a winnowing fan, he is describing peace as the place where the sea has no meaning.

6. 06

   Argos the dog

   Twenty years old, lying on a dung heap full of ticks, ignored by everyone. He lifts his head, knows his master instantly, and dies. He is the cost of the absence in miniature, and the fact that Odysseus has to wipe away a tear and walk past him is the sharpest thing in the poem about what disguise takes from you.