A (not) so small philosophical interpretation of Odysseus in epic
Disclaimer: I'm doing this analysis for fun, please don't take everything I write as truth, because this text is based on my interpretation and, even though it took some academic research to do it. It's worth remembering that I don't have a degree in philosophy yet, so I can still make mistakes on some points. Another point I want to highlight is that I wrote this text in a language other than English, and there may be some translation errors by Google, so I apologize if anything is confusing or if you have any questions about something, feel free to comment or send an ask, I'll do my best to explain.
(Notice that's basically me as far as you decide to read this blog)
EPIC:the musical is a work that is very present in my life and in the lives of many other people who are reading this little fan outburst; And if you've just stumbled upon this craze and are hearing about it for the first time, a brief summary is that it's a musical, more addictive than drugs, that tells the story of Odysseus, that guy from Greek mythology who spent 20 years trying to get home after the Trojan War, also known as Simp by his wife Penelope. We have moments of joy, sadness, introspection and many fan outbursts caused by the owner of it all, Jorge Rivera-Herrans, who is not only the creator but also the lead singer of this masterpiece, playing Odysseus and a few others.
But let's get back to the analysis here because I could talk about this for hours without stopping.
A few months ago, when the Underworld saga was released, I remembered the phrase:
"If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
This phrase was written by Nietzsche in the book Beyond Good and Evil, and it reminds me a lot of the Odysseus we see in EPIC, although the phrase is incomplete in the previous quote, even though it is the most common one we see being spread around. The original is:
“Whoever fights monsters should take care that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
And I also remember thinking about that phrase by Heraclitus, which I think everyone has heard, probably incompletely, at some point in school:
“No one can step into the same river twice, for when he steps into it again, the waters are not the same, and the being itself has already changed. Thus, everything is governed by dialectics, the tension and the alternation of opposites. Therefore, reality is always the result of change, that is, of the struggle between opposites.”
In my opinion, I think that both phrases fit well with the version of the character that we see starring in the entire musical, since most ancient myths and poems have different versions and translations and of course Jorge took some artistic liberties; Odysseus is a Greek hero who fights against many monsters, both mythical and internal, taking into account his ethics as a person while trying to survive and return home.
I think it's interesting to point out that from here on I'll use some different terms, but I'll do my best to explain them.
We can see that throughout all the sagas Odysseus is describing the line of what it is to be human and how one can easily slip off it; this line is located between the definition of gods and monsters/animals and is known as Metron, which gave rise to the word measure, and here we will use it as a synonym for limit for something. It's also good to say that metron has nothing to do with a person's morals/character, because it's a question of ethics.
Morals are the set of rules that concern good and evil, right and wrong. These standards refer to values that are passed down from generation to generation and guide the conduct of individuals in their daily lives. (personal)
Ethics is a field of philosophy whose object of study is the principles that guide morality. In this sense, ethics is a philosophical reflection on morality, approaching the universal principles that govern the common good and coexistence between human beings in general. (common sense)
In my opinion about the musical, the issue of gods and monsters is not so different. For me, in that context, monsters and gods are the same thing, since they are outside the ideal of humanity, but this point may be mentioned later.
Metron is not a knowledge, it is, above all, the limit between impossibility and weakness.
We can see in several Greek myths that human beings like to cross this line, most stories end in tragedy because of this, human beings can also be called “Hybris” which is an excess, it is being hybrid, having two natures, acting in two ways, it is being in the Metron and trying to be something that one is not, because thinking that we can be more than men is arrogance, and arrogance is a human emotion, another story that exemplifies this well is the myth of Oedipus who tries to overcome his destiny given by the gods and ends up fulfilling it anyway.
Hybris is a Greek concept that can be translated as "everything that goes beyond the measure; "immoderation" and which currently alludes to excessive confidence, exaggerated pride, presumption, arrogance or insolence (originally against the gods), which often ends up being punished.
It is worth noting that hybris would in no way be a sin, in the concept of the word and the ideal current translation for it would be "Hamartia", which by chance is also no longer used in its original meaning because of the Catholic Church.
Now going to the interesting part because I was just giving context of terms.
In The Horse and the Infant, we 'meet' our beloved version of Odysseus, where during the Trojan War he states that everything he is doing is for his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, using this as a way to inspire his men to carry out the massacre that he himself did not want to participate in, I think because of his moral nature, the proof is so much that in Homer's original Odyssey, he pretends to be crazy so as not to show up when called, unfortunately he is unmasked and forced to go.
We also see here that up until now Odysseus is still a very moral character, he has his reasons for being there, he, like the other warriors, has a family and his deepest desire is to return to them. So with this we can conclude that he is still just a man, he is human.
In the same song we see how far his morality goes, as he receives the divine mission to kill the young Trojan prince, Astyanax, who is just a baby, due to the threat that one day he will want revenge on him and his kingdom.
All of this creates doubts in Odysseus, about the morality of gods and men. Here we see him crossing the line and this whole text begins to be about ethics, as it is common sense that killing a child is a monstrous act, but for him not to kill means that his family will die in a more horrendous way later and he cannot let that happen.
Then we have the monologue in Just a Man, the best song, where we can really see the doubts mentioned earlier. And one detail that I find very interesting and that will be important for this text is that in Gigi's animatic, we can see Odysseus' "monster" being 'born' and its source is the baby and his doubts about whether he would really be a monster just for that, even though at that moment the baby is still just a human, the mission to kill him little by little makes him a monster due to the possibility that one day he himself will commit several atrocities.
It's fun for me to think that representing 'the monster' as a tree could be an allusion to the fact that trees take as long to grow as a monster takes to be formed by man.
I think you now understand part of Nietzsche's quote. Odysseus looking at his own reflection and not recognizing himself, seeing the monster he will become if he crosses the metronome is very well treated in several animatics, but the most visible is in Gigi's where he is not only referenced but shown as a completely different being both in attitudes and thoughts.
I'll just pause to say that I love how Gigi did the work of showing the tree growing in the shape of a skull, which could be the deaths that the monster will bring or that it is a macabre thing to do, I don't know, I just love this detail for some reason.
And also how I think that makes a point of showing that the real problem is not the baby but rather Odysseus' unethical thoughts developing because of his doubts.
Ok, end of the pause and start of a mini explanation.
I didn't think this analysis would be so long and in my original thought I was only going to end up mentioning a few songs and focusing more on "No Longer You" and "Monster" but it ended up getting out of control and listening to the musical again it seems like I can make a lot of connections that I hadn't thought of before but now I can't express them properly, so from now on there will be a gigantic gap in content that I might fill later in another post or by editing this one, but at the moment thinking too much about it is giving me a headache and I really wanted to be able to post this now along with the Wisdom Saga because it's something I did for fun from fan to fan and I know that now the fandom is busier. One day I swear I'll do a complete analysis relating song by song, but not today for the sake of my mental health.
End of explanation, subject change.
Going through his entire journey, Ody goes to the underworld after Tiresias who reveals that he will never return home, which makes him indignant, I think any human would be, how much he suffered to get there for nothing. Here we can see how Heraclitus fits into the prophet, and as much as I hate cutting philosophical phrases in half, I don't think I need to use the whole thing to make sense of it here, because the most well-known part of it is enough to get to the point discussed here, since it really won't be him who returns to Ithaca, but rather another man, a man haunted by his own past and by the ethics of his people.
There is no way a man who spent 20 years away from home, suffering for the divine and for his own mind, can be the same, because this is a human characteristic, humans are hybrid beings, which implies that we can change our own nature while gods and monsters will always follow the same line of thought, since they are perfect they do not need drastic changes to live as they are.
That's it. So finally we have the mental breakdown where Ody begins to accept that it doesn't matter if he is a monster to everyone, he did what was necessary. He looked into the abyss and was looked back. He becomes the monster, even if he compares himself to the other divine creatures, which I think he never really learned to differentiate from humans, because Ody my friend there is no way you can really reach the level of a cyclops or a god with a wounded ego, or a traumatized nymph, time makes things very trivial for them and let's face it you will not live even half as long as they do because you are just a mortal.
And I don't know how to make gifs so here are some prints to illustrate the last paragraph. But before that I wanted to thank you if you read this far, I know the ending was kind of bad but I'm emotionally tired, I hope I at least conveyed the idea that was in my head. Thank you and stream the new saga!!!!
(All arts belong to gigi!! go check out this amazing work!!!)
