prizes he won during the Trojan War—and has nothing to show for it; there is no “harvest” for him. He is limping home, exhausted, after twenty years of being away. Ten years were spent in a war, and ten years were spent just beinglost—the victim of one catastrophe after another. He is more like someone who, having been lost, sees a light in a window at the edge of the forest and knows that help is near and that his trials are nearly over.

Arguably, the fact that Alcinous loads him down with gifts (because the Phaecians are so moved by his tale of woe) is sort of like Odysseus finally reaping a reward for all the toil he has undergone to get this close to home—they restore to him the greater part of what he lost through his various disasters, give him a good ship, and point him back toward Ithaca. The farmer who senses that the end of his labor is near is like Odysseus; Odysses is finally, after all this time, in sight of home, and he knows that he will soon be able to rest. Perhaps the “harvest” is in fact his homecoming (and, in addition to his home itself, his wife and his son). When Odysseus set out at the beginning of his “day” ten years ago, he knew the journey home meant work, but he thought it would be straight journey from Troy to Ithaca. Instead, he zigged and zagged across the Aegean for a decade, and each time he got close to home, he was turned away again in the opposite direction. This is similar to the way a team of oxen must turn at the end of each row to properly plough a field. Now he knows he is on the final furrow, and when he crosses it, he is finished; there will not be any more turning. The thought fills him with hope, and, simultaneously, he is exhausted because the prospect of rest after all this time is almost too much to bear. He just has to finish this last leg of his journey before he can reap the harvest of home, family, and rest.