While Giono [in Naissance de l'Odyssée] tells what "really" happened in legendary Ithaca, he cajoles the reader into a suspension of disbelief, a tongue-in-cheek reminder of the ancient epic, which creates the comic element in this modern companion piece to the Odyssey. (p. 378)

In this world of deception all existence runs its course free of convenient aid from Olympus. Ulysses must struggle for himself and with himself in a universe devoid of conventional godheads, be they anthropomorphic or transcendent. Giono has preferred to create a world where the presence of the supernatural is manifested in all creation, rather than in a traditional being or man-chosen object. (p. 379)

It hardly need be reiterated that in Homer's account Ulysses often comes to the fore as a schemer, the power of which is only matched by his physical prowess…. The leitmotiv of Giono's narrative finds its origin in [Athena's observation that she and Ulysses "are both adept at Chicane"], while it is also at this point in the Odyssey—Ulysses having returned to Ithaca—that Giono begins the novel proper. (p. 380)

As Homer tells us, there was disharmony upon Olympus which prevented Ulysses from reaching his home in blessed safety. As a parallel, Part I of Giono's novel ends on a note of doubt and fear. Walking along, Ulysses senses an "inquiétude" walking alongside him as a reminder that he has deliberately distorted the truth…. A fabulous hero has thus been born in the stories of a man who furtively tries to hide his identity…. (p. 381)

Nearing its conclusion, Naissance de l'Odyssée moves back to its beginning. Giono skillfully suggests with the last word of the novel the one that began it, aplati. The hero glimpses behind the dense foliage that protects the pond his angry and spiteful son. Telemachus, with wet hair matted like a helmet, is—so ends the final sentence—sharpening "un épieu en bois de platane."… With the word platane Giono has recalled aplati, and in so doing so has once more "flattened" his hero. Although the menacing intrusion upon an idyllic scene of a grown child at play is unexpected, it may convey Giono's view that the perpetual bliss of an enchanted world can too readily be destroyed by hate and resentment. However, in order to provide a point of stability for Ulysses, Giono has created a Penelope so affectionately that it is difficult to miss his preference for the woman of the narrative.

In the Odyssey it is said of Penelope that she has an excellent brain and a genius for getting her way…. It is this combination of qualities, together with a casual negligence, which Giono has selected to portray an idle, but not unsympathetic woman. For Homer she bore a resemblance to the spider-that-was-Arachne, endlessly weaving and thus repeating the truth of death; for Giono she is a latter-day Ariadne who provides more than one thread in the maze of her husband's doubts to lead him astray in his search for the monster of inquiétude. (pp. 382-83)

In a real sense it can … be said of Ulysses that he has become the healer of minds grown apart from nature, a healer of the spirit in man dulled with labor and monotony. His success has depended, as Giono implies, upon the mythological enlargement of his human personality which has never lost touch with the natural world of the senses. With enchanted disrespect Giono has spoofed a hallowed epic without turning his vagabond hero into a subject of ridicule. The mockery never obscures Giono's love for his principal character who set out to seize the world and who, in intense cosmic communion, gathered each day for better or for worse. With imagination victorious, but never so triumphant that the reality of the natural sense impression is shut out, Giono concludes with Ulysses that the secret of their happiness lies in communion with sand and water, with flower and tree, with the land which partakes of the Woman, with the earth which has become Penelope…. She has the russet color of the pond, Ulysses' microcosmic world which, in ultimate transfiguration, is about to become the perilous sea that brought him home to Ithaca. (pp. 386-87)