Dear Friends,
This summer’s blockbuster movie ‘The Odyssey’ was Christopher Nolan’s presentation, or interpretation, of Homer’s 8th Century BC epic poem of the same name. In addition to being one of the highest grossing films of all time, it also managed something remarkable, it got people not only talking about the original story but even reading it.
While the plot adheres closely to the original storyline – the Trojan War and horse, the cyclops, Circe the witch, the Sirens, and so on – the debate about the movie’s fidelity to the original poem centers more on the essence of the story. Did Nolan emasculate the ancient male hero in favor of an insecure and conflicted post-modern man in need of therapy? Did Odysseus’ confession of guilt for the transgressions of the war betray the very essence of the epic hero? In the poem Odysseus has no such remorse. In the movie, he believes that in the sacking of Troy they violated all that was sacred. On this point, the movie is clearly different. Is Nolan’s adaptation even plausible? Could Odysseus have had moral qualms about the war?
I would argue that Nolan’s adaptation of the original story touches upon a theme that the original does not: Man’s conscience speaks to him of absolute moral truths which can transcend his own culture. Let’s consider this in three points, culture, conscience, and when the two come into conflict.
We are clearly influenced by the culture in which we live. What we think about marriage, family, God [or gods], religion, justice, governance, and war will all be deeply ingrained from the society around us. Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s poem, represents the virtues valued by the Greeks of that epoch. He is praised for his courage, fidelity, leadership, and strength – virtues we as contemporary Americans can appreciate. However, Odysseus is also praised for his cunning and ability to deceive others when helpful to his cause; and his infidelities with Calypso and Circe are overlooked while the fidelity of Penelope, his wife, is praised. Such ‘virtues’ sit less well with us. In that vein, when Odysseus of the poem has few qualms about the destruction of Troy, it is consistent with the values of his culture.
Nolan’s insertion of Odysseus’ guilt for his role in Troy’s downfall introduces the elements of interiority and individual conscience absent from the original story. While issues of right and wrong were addressed in classical literature, the person’s interior world usually was not. That changed with St. Augustine’s ‘Confessions’ – his introspective autobiography.[i] In the movie Odysseus is struggling with what he did in Troy as a betrayal of all of their sacred norms. He reveals this to Penelope before she knows it’s him who is speaking. Number 1776 of the Catechism states,
“Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil … For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God…. His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”
Oddyseus, like all of us, struggles to hear and obey that voice. It is a voice that cannot fully be eradicated by error or sin.[ii] It is at least plausible that guilt about the war could have plagued our hero. Wrestling to obey one’s conscience is not a sign of weakness, it is what separates the villain from the hero.
The objection to such guilt declares that it is anachronistic and not in the poem. Having been a son of his culture, Odysseus would not have felt guilt for the deception that led to the sacking Troy. Rather, the Trojans committed evil and needed to pay.[iii]The Greeks were the good guys and would have felt vindicated in their actions. That is likely true. However, the question is whether the adaptation is even plausible. The difference between Homer’s Odysseus and Nolan’s highlights the issue of whether an individual’s conscience can reject the commonly held views of his culture. The answer is clearly ‘yes.’ Were that not the case, then we could never have conscientious objectors or reformers that decried the injustices of their times.
All people from every epoch and culture are made in the image and likeness of God, whether they know it or not. All have a conscience ordered towards moral truth, whether they acknowledge it or not. While a culture can either hinder or help man discover and live according to that moral truth, it cannot be eradicated from man’s heart all together. In many heroic cases such as William Wilberforce, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the individual’s conviction was strong enough to turn society around.
Did Odysseus feel guilty for the war? We do not know, but we can thank Nolan for making us talk about culture, guilt, and conscience.
