Who Owns The Odyssey?

Every generation discovers a different Odyssey. 

That may be the secret of why Homer’s poem has remained alive for nearly three thousand years. It refuses to become a museum piece. It sails into every age and somehow returns wearing different clothes. 

The Greeks heard a story of endurance and homecoming. Virgil looked through the lens of empire. Dante admired Odysseus’s brilliance while questioning the moral cost of his endless pursuit of knowledge. Tennyson imagined a king who could no longer remain still. James Joyce found Odysseus walking through Dublin, proving that an ordinary day could contain an epic journey. 

Margaret Atwood asked what Penelope—and the twelve women history barely noticed—might have said if they had been given the chance. Madeline Miller invited readers inside Circe’s life, revealing a woman far more complex than the enchantress who briefly interrupted another person’s voyage. More recently, EPIC: The Musical has introduced millions of listeners to The Odyssey through contemporary music, inviting a new generation to experience Odysseus’s courage, failures, sacrifices, and determination to return home. 

None of these works replaces Homer. Each simply asks a different question. That is what great stories allow. They are never finished. They continue to speak because every age hears something the previous one overlooked. 

A Different Question 

Between Shores was born from a question that had quietly followed me for years: What if everyone in The Odyssey believed they were the hero of their own story? 

The more I lived with that question, the less interested I became in heroes. Another question replaced it: What if every being has something to share? 

Not merely the famous. Not merely the victorious. Not merely the human. Every god, every monster, every sailor, every woman, every stranger encountered along the shore. Every voice carries a world we cannot fully see. 

Beyond Heroes 

Traditional storytelling often asks us to decide who is right. Who is the hero? Who is the villain? Who deserves our sympathy? Life has rarely seemed that simple to me. 

Polyphemus is a monster—until we enter his cave. The Sirens are dangerous—until we ask what it might mean to spend eternity singing songs no one was ever meant to survive. Circe becomes more than temptation. Penelope becomes more than patience. Poseidon becomes more than anger. 

None of them ceases to be who they are. Instead, each becomes larger than the role assigned by another person’s story. 

The goal is not to excuse every action, nor is it to erase responsibility. Listening is not agreement. Compassion is not surrender. Understanding does not require approval. Not all lessons are worth absorbing. But every being may still have something to share, and before we judge another life, we might first ask whether we have heard enough of it. 

The Longest Voyage 

Odysseus crosses impossible seas. He outwits monsters. He survives storms. He reaches Ithaca. Those are extraordinary achievements. 

Yet I wonder whether an even longer voyage remained. Could he learn to hear the beings whose lives intersected his own? Could he understand that while he was the hero of his story, everyone else was living one as well? 

Perhaps the greatest adventure is not crossing the sea. Perhaps it is crossing the distance between certainty and understanding. 

Why We Continue to Return 

The enduring works of literature never stop asking questions. That is why we continue to rewrite them—not because Homer was incomplete, but because every generation discovers another doorway into the same house. 

One of the remarkable things about The Odyssey is that it refuses to stay still. The image on the Between Shores landing page is an ever-sailing ship because the story itself remains in motion. We continue to board it carrying different hopes, different fears, and different questions. 

Between Shores is simply one more voyage. Not an answer. An invitation: to pause before certainty; to look again; to ask what is wonderful in the being before us; to wonder what we have not yet heard; and to discover what may be shared between us. 

Curiosity propels the voyage. 
Listening is its reward. 

Written by Paula Phelan, PiP Art Studio