What’s Epic About the ‘Odyssey’? Everything.

The gist

With Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of Homer's Odyssey releasing this week, The Daily brings together two leading interpreters of the ancient text: Emily Wilson, who made history as the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English (using iambic pentameter to preserve the original's rhythmic power), and Madeline Miller, author of Circe and Song of Achilles, novels that retell Homer's stories from women's perspectives. Together they explore what makes this 3,000-year-old tale of a man's ten-year journey home still matter profoundly today.

Key takeaways

• Emily Wilson's translation innovation: Wilson rendered The Odyssey in iambic pentameter—matching Shakespeare's meter—to activate the original's rhythmic and oral qualities that she felt were lost in modern prose translations that treat it as merely a story rather than poetry designed for performance.

• The complexity of Odysseus: He is not a traditional warrior-hero but a trickster-strategist defined by code-switching, self-reinvention, and intellectual cunning rather than brute strength. His PTSD from the Trojan War and subsequent trauma shape his ruthlessness and devotion simultaneously—he's both devoted family man and cold murderer.

• Penelope as equal, not passive: Penelope actively tests Odysseus upon his return (the bed made from a living tree), cons the suitors into providing gifts, and maintains her own agency. She's presented as his intellectual match, though the text keeps her perspective somewhat mysterious.

• The enslaved members matter: Characters like Eumaeus and Eurycleia are crucial to understanding the poem's themes. Eumaeus desires his own house rather than a homecoming journey, highlighting that Odysseus's glory depends on people who haven't chosen to be in his household—a theme about privilege worth exploring.

• Adaptation as tradition, not betrayal: Both scholars emphasize that adaptation isn't new; Homer himself inherited oral traditions that were constantly reshaped. Nolan's film joins a 3,000-year lineage of retellings, and criticism of "unfaithfulness" misunderstands how these texts function. Multiple interpretations strengthen, not diminish, the work.

• Hospitality as central modern lesson: The poem's core concern—welcoming strangers and recognizing their potential divinity—speaks urgently to contemporary questions about belonging and obligation. The suitors' violation of Odysseus's hospitality by invading his house drives the entire revenge plot.

• Why both dedicated years to this text: Wilson and Miller wanted the ancient text's emotional power—its rage, grief, and complexity—to be viscerally felt by modern readers, not relegated to academia. Both believe audiences can and should feel the rhythm and resonance across millennia.

Notable quotes

• Emily Wilson: "The Odyssey is this really complex portrayal of a hieros, which in the archaic context means this outsized character who performs outsized deeds... He's both a warrior hero and a trickster hero and a strategy hero."

• Madeline Miller: "It was her story and the idea that the story of a woman's life and growth into her vocation and her role as an artist, which is how witchcraft functions for me, is enough. That is story."

• On adaptation philosophy: "You can write very close to the text and not be successful and very far from the text and be completely successful. What makes for a successful retelling is how true and fully fleshed the vision that the writer has is."

Worth a full listen?

Listen if you're seeing Nolan's film and want expert context on the poem's major characters, themes, and why this 3,000-year-old story endures—or if you're interested in how classical texts are translated and adapted across centuries. The TLDR suffices if you only need plot summary and character basics.