Odyssey - Jasper Griffin (essay date 1980)

Jasper Griffin (essay date 1980)

SOURCE: "Characterization," in Homer on Life and Death, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1980, pp. 50-80.

[In the following essay, Griffin addresses the issue of inconsistent characterization in the Odyssey, contending that the complexity of the characters gives them "depth and significance."]

lesky compares the structure of the odyssey to that of the iliad (1957-58):

the odyssey, like the iliad, has a very compressed time-scale: all the events occur within forty days. but this concentration is effected by very different means. in the iliad the wrath theme forms a solid core round which all the other elements are ultimately wrapped. this is concentration in the truest sense: the way in which the fates of achilles, patroclus and hector are bound up one with another and with the central wrath motif allows us to speak...

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