Summary
They sail to the stream of Ocean and the land of the Cimmerians, where the sun never shines. Odysseus digs a trench, pours offerings, and cuts the throats of sheep; the dead gather to the blood.
Elpenor comes first, unburied, and begs for a proper burial and a marked grave. Tiresias then prophesies: they may still reach home if they leave the cattle of the Sun untouched at Thrinacia; if not, all the crew will die and Odysseus will come home late, in another's ship, to find trouble in his house. Afterwards he must travel inland carrying an oar until he meets people who take it for a winnowing fan, sacrifice to Poseidon there, and return; death will come to him from the sea, gently, in a prosperous old age.
His mother Anticleia tells him she died of longing for him, and that his father Laertes has withdrawn to the country. He tries three times to embrace her and she passes through his arms. A catalogue of famous women follows.
The narrative pauses; Alcinous urges him on. Agamemnon describes his murder and warns him to come home in secret. Achilles says he would rather be a hired labourer to a landless man than king over all the dead, and asks after his son. Ajax refuses to speak and walks away. Odysseus sees Minos judging, and Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus, and the phantom of Heracles, before fear drives him back to the ship.
Narrative function
The structural centre of the poem. It supplies the prophecy that governs the rest of the plot, the warning that determines how Odysseus returns, and the poem's judgement on the heroic ideal of the Iliad.
Greek concepts in this book
- nekyia
- The rite of summoning and questioning the dead — the traditional name for this book.
- psychē
- The shade that survives death: witless without blood, and unable to be embraced. Homeric afterlife is not reward or punishment for most of the dead; it is diminishment.
- kleos
- Achilles's speech is the poem's direct challenge to the Iliad's central value: fame is worth less than being alive.
Connections to other books
Book 12
Tiresias's warning about the cattle of the Sun is disregarded in Book 12, exactly as prophesied.
Book 13 · Book 16
Agamemnon's advice to return secretly is why Odysseus lands disguised and tests his own household.
Book 23 · Book 24
The prophecy of further travel is repeated to Penelope in Book 23; the reunion with Laertes in Book 24 answers Anticleia's report here.
Source notes
Book 11 has been suspected of expansion since antiquity, particularly the catalogue of heroines and the closing procession of Minos, Tityus, Tantalus and Sisyphus, which sits awkwardly with the framing device of shades drawn to blood. The dead do not go to a place of judgement in the main narrative; the punishments described near the end imply a different conception. We report the inconsistency rather than smoothing it.
Reading it responsibly
The most important line in the poem for its relation to the Iliad is Achilles's. The man who chose a short life with undying fame says, from the other side, that he chose wrong. The Odyssey is in that moment arguing with the poem it grew out of, and taking the side of survival, household and return.