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Odysseus asks for the wooden horse song because going home requires him to confront and admit the pain he has been repressing.
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Jiang says the Odyssey is fundamentally a homecoming story in which Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus must rediscover love after twenty years of separation.
Jiang frames the Odyssey as the sequel to the Iliad and as a family story about homecoming after war, trauma, and heartbreak.
The Odyssey is defined as the journey in which Odysseus repairs his soul enough to go home.
The quoted Iliad passage shows the Greek army rushing for home like storm-driven waves when given permission to leave.
The Iliad passage shows Odysseus not boarding the ships even though the army is leaving, which Jiang reads as evidence that Odysseus is not simply eager to return home.
Calypso offers Odysseus immortal captivity, but Jiang reads Odysseus as needing to refuse immortality because home is necessary for repair.
Odysseus asks for the wooden horse song because going home requires him to confront and admit the pain he has been repressing.
The central conflict of the Odyssey is whether someone who has done great evil can go home by repairing the soul and worldview enough to live for family.
"...as we discussed last lecture, the Odyssey is really about a homecoming. About three members of a family, Odysseus, Penelope, and Timarchus, who after..."
"...Iliad, and it's a family story. It's a story about a homecoming, and there are three main characters, right? There's Odysseus, sorry, Odysseus, who..."
"Because again, he's abandoning his family for 20 years, okay? So what's going to happen is this. This is the worldview that Odysseus has..."
"Testing his men, but he only made the spirit race inside their chests, all the rank and file who'd never heard his plan. And..."
"The bright -eyed goddess Pallas lost no time. Down she flashed from the peaks of Mount Olympus, quickly reached the ships and found Odysseus..."
"So, um, so everyone's trying to go home and you would think that Odysseus would be the first person to get on a ship..."
"Okay, so he's a broken man. He's a very different person from the Iliad. Okay? So, now the question then is why? What happened..."
"Odysseus, master of many exploits, praised the singer. I respect you, Demodocus, more than any man alive. Surely the muse has taught you, Zeus'..."
"So he's feeling all this pain because of memories of the Trojan War. But he recognizes that if he's willing to go home, because..."
"This is not a war about family. This is a war about destroying families. And what legacy am I leaving my son? How will..."
The Odyssey ends by making love more important than empire, fame, and heroic death.
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