The art of storytelling is something embedded in human culture; stories unite us all in the persual to understand, emphasize, and relate to what we know to be the experience of the human condition. Stories and poems have been recycled and remembered as far back as the ancient civilizations, these stories and poems especially stand out as esteemed members of the canon of our history. A certain poem which remains immortalized is an epic poem of a man’s journey across the perilous seas to reach his beloved home, son and wife. This poem is the epic titled The Odyssey written by Homer sometime in the 8th century BC. Written in ancient Greece this poem centralizes around a man named Odysseus, a hero of the Trojan war. After the fall of Troy and on his voyage across the seas towards his home island of Ithaca, he ends up getting trapped on the island of Ogygia by the beautiful Greek goddess Calypso. Upon being held hostage on the island he encounters many complications in his capture and escape that will not allow him to reach home for 10 years; after his trials he finally reaches Ithaca in rapture to reclaim his spot on the throne and his wife Penelope. He slaughters the men that have betrayed him while he was gone and makes love to Penelope, the reader left with the conclusion that Ithaca is safe and now Odysseus will be left alone to reign again as the brave man he is portrayed to be. This famous maritime narrative of Greek lore seems innocent from the eyes of those never held under subjugation; when inspected The Odyssey  is nothing short of a story glorifying a patriarchal society that dehumanizes all who are not white, Greek men. The success of Odysseus perilous journey home is not due to his acclaimed traits but because he was a white Greek man. The epic poem The Odyssey written by Greek poet Homer is the parallel of the western slave narrative and slave existence if experienced by a white man.

The theory of whiteness and its superiority has been something that is innately situated within the world’s culture and history. Ancient Greece is well known for their contributions in philosophy, mathematics, literature, geometry, and many other intellectual hierarchies. This intellectual advancement, however, is not attributed to the society but is remembered as created by white men. White men in ancient Greece held all the power and epitomized what the ideal citizen should resemble or imitate. Therefor, this perfect persona was not allowed to be characterized in literature as weak or failed. The character Odysseus in Homer’s The Odyssey  was created to resemble all these idealized traits. Throughout his return to Ithaca he is constantly lightened in the image of flattery, described with only positive characteristics. In Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s The Odyssey he is described that “his handsomeness was dazzling” (238), and the “great king Odysseus/ master of any challenge” (487-488), or “the competent, sharp-eye Odysseus” (281). Even though he is being held captive by the goddess Calypso, or being ravaged by the powers of the Gods and Goddess, he is still able to maintain control over his fate and is still held in high pose because he is a white Greek man. When comparing this to a slave narrative and the journey across the middle passage, the dialogue is completely opposite.

A startling slave narrative written in the 18th century was The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the Africa, Written by Himself. This narrative consists of the African man Olaudah Equiano who is captured into slavery at the age of 11. Much of his narrative exists on his journey across the middle passage, much like the journey in which Odysseus takes. Yet, because Odysseus is ideally white, he does not undergo the loss of agency experienced by Equiano. In a passage of The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself  Olaudah Equiano writes about his life on the slave ship “my master now left me entirely to the captain…Therefor, relying on the goodness of my captain…by a sudden turn in the captain’s temper, he might mean to sell me” (92-93).  Equiano, the moment he was captured by the white man, loses any control he may have over his own fate, becoming completely at mercy to his masters. While Odysseus perils were inflicted upon him by his unequals (Gods and Goddesses), Equiano’s were inflicted on by what should be considered his human equals (white men). It is impossible to write a slave narrative from the perspective of a white man because the white man does not have any superiors on this world, and Homer’s The Odyssey works to prove this by creating an environment in which the white man could be a slave only to the most powerful entity considerable; the Supreme beings. Even then, despite the many obstacles the Gods and Goddesses gave him, Odysseus breaks the God’s will and makes it back to Ithaca. It is as if the white man is more powerful than the Gods. But to Equiano, his only securance of freedom is held in the temperance of the white man.

Today’s culture and the how it views the Black body is symbiotic with the system of slavery that is entrenched in our history. There is no escaping the inseparable past that is buried with the bones of those that built the American soil. Because of the hierarchy forever enforced upon whites and blacks, the struggle to find an equality is almost everlasting. Black and African-American members of society face racial prejudices and discriminations as intrinsic aspects of their lives, aspects unfair because they have not done anything to deserve them; aspects which feel horrific, appear fruitless to rebuttal. When inspecting the story The Odyssey written by Homer it is obvious that the character Odysseus, because he was white, had a security in his adventures which would not be if he were black. His journey’s continuously lead him into situations that almost guarantee his death and his crew members death, for he not the white Greek man Odysseus. For example when Odysseus finds his men to be captured by the goddess Circe and turned into pigs, he goes to her and demands them to be unslaved and returned to their former bodies. In Homer’s The Odyssey it appears in the passages from Odysseus “if you are so insistent/ on telling me to eat and drink, then free them/ so I may see with my own eyes my crew/ of loyal men…The potion/ had made thick hog-hairs sprout out on their bodies/ Those bristles flew off and they were men…Odysseus, you always find solutions” (385-402). Although Circe is a powerful goddess, she will still listen to Odysseus commands to unslave his crew members because he ended up sleeping with her. This reversal happens quickly, suddenly the men are returned to themselves and the tale continues without a second glance. When comparing this shift to the narrative, to the existence of slavery imparted by the white man on the black man, this couldn’t be further from the case. In the novel In the Wake: On Blackness and Being written by Christina Sharpe, she address the effects of slavery as an entity that cannot, will not, go way. Sharpe in In the Wake: On Blackness and Being states that “living in/ the wake of slavery is living in ‘the afterlife of property…’Living in the wake means living the history and present of terror, from slavery to the present, as the ground of our everyday Black existence” (15). Sharpe is emphasizing that the concept of slavery is not as fluid as Homer addresses in The Odyssey, one simply cannot go from being enslaved to being not enslaved. This can only be the case if the person in question is white, and because The Odyssey is a white man’s narrative it is typical that the aspects of enslavement would not contain the wake which Sharpe perpetuates. This parallel further accentuates the respect that The Odyssey is the narrative of the journey and existence of enslaved persons if experienced by a white man.

The tale The Odyssey, despite its faults, is an interesting and mystical maritime tale about the ancient Greeks; engaging the mind and imagination in stories of Gods, Goddesses, and our interaction with the spiritual realm. Yet it cannot be ignored that it’s view is one-sided, appealing and reconciling with only one group, the Greek white male. This is made clear when comparing it to slave narrative The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the Africa, Written by Himself  by Olaudah Equiano, and Christian Sharpes In the Wake: On Blackness and Being because these two novels illuminate the racism within The Odyssey; specifically highlighting the privilege which Odysseus, which all white men, possess and continue to possess.

-MaraJean Hagen-Spath

 

Works Cited

Equiano, Olaudah, 1745-1797. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African. Peterborough, Ont. :Broadview Press, 2001. Print.  

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Emily Wilson. New York: Norton, 2018. Print.

Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. London: Duke University, 2006. Print.