Point of View

The Odyssey does not have an obvious point of view, and at first appears to be told in a third person voice-of-god style. However, the storyteller himself does occasionally speak to characters, revealing his own personality. He asks the muses to help him to tell the story well, and later he addresses Eumaeus as ‘you’ because he likes and admires the character so much. This begs the question, who exactly is the narrator of The Odyssey?

The Odyssey is an epic poem from ancient Greece, which was passed down orally from generation to generation. This means that it does not have one obvious author. It also means that the story itself would change with each retelling, as each bard who told it changed certain scenes a little, added parts, took away parts, or emphasized different ideas. The poem as we have it was recorded in...