Examples Of Nostalgia In The Odyssey

The Odyssey, by Homer, is one of the most well-known books in history, all the way back thousands of years ago. It follows the great Odysseus of Ithaca through his twenty-year journey to the Trojan war and back home. However, there is a historical debate about when that is, when he truly makes it home, or even if he does at all. The English word nostalgia, meaning the longing for the past, comes from the Greek words nostos and algos, the first meaning to return home, and the latter meaning pain and sorrow. The epic journey of Odysseus certainly tests his limits in both pain and sorrow, and how much he is willing to risk to return home. Home is defined differently for different people, though the common agreement is that it is a place, time, or person that makes you

Though Athena initially covers it in a fog, even once she lifts it he does not know where he is. When he wakes up in Ithaca he says “Where am I now? Are those who live here violent and cruel?... They promised me that they would bring me home to Ithaca. They broke their word and brought me somewhere else” (13.200-212) Ithaca has not stopped growing and changing while Odysseus has been away. The home he once knew and loved has evolved into a completely different place, leaving him feeling vulnerable, and not comfortable. Even when it is revealed to him that it is indeed his homeland, he still does not believe it “Tell me the truth! Is this my own dear home?” (13.238) He is so convinced he is elsewhere that he refuses to believe even the goddess of wisdom herself. This is not the homecoming he had imagined all those years, picturing Ithaca as he remembered it, not thinking of the changes of the times. Nostalgia is that of longing for the past, and in Odysseus’s case, the past is all he knows. He did not return to the past lands of Ithaca, and so he is not truly home simply by setting foot on the island