Home or Away: Homecoming, Glory, and the Good Death in Homer's Odyssey

This article examines the overlapping themes of the good death (euthanasia), glory (kleos), and homecoming (nostos) as they are deployed in Homer's Odyssey. On both a thematic and a structural level, I argue that the text stages a confrontation between homecoming and glory - between death at home and death in battle - and that this tension is a sustaining force throughout the text. In contrast to the received interpretation that sees the Odyssey as a straightforward tale of nostalgia, I argue that in Homer's epic the relation to homecoming turns out to be surprising and complex - an event that is at once painfully desired and perpetually deferred.