The Odyssey for Kids: Every Adventure Explained

The Odyssey is one of the oldest stories in Europe and also one of the simplest: a man wants to go home. It takes him ten years.

What makes it so useful for children is its shape. It is not one continuous plot but a chain of stops, and each one works as a story on its own. So you can start with any of them without knowing the rest — and a whole still assembles over time.

Before it starts: the war at Troy

Ten years of war come before the journey home. The Greeks besiege Troy and cannot get in — until Odysseus has the idea about the wooden horse.

The Story of the Trojan Horse is the best entry point to the whole body of material, because it is self-contained and because it is the first time you see how Odysseus operates: he does not win by strength, he wins with an idea nobody sees coming.

For how the war began at all, The Story of Achilles covers the greatest fighter among the Greeks — and the most famous weak spot in literature.

Stop 1: The Lotus-Eaters

The first island after the war. Its people live on a fruit that makes you forget everything — anyone who eats it stops wanting to go home. Odysseus has to drag his own men back to the ships.

A short episode, but one of the most modern in content: a story about something that feels good and stops you doing what you actually want.

Stop 2: The Cyclops Polyphemus

The famous one, and where most people begin. Odysseus and his men are trapped in the cave of a man-eating giant, and the way out is a pun: Odysseus says his name is "Nobody".

The Story of Odysseus and the Cyclops is also the hinge of the entire Odyssey — this is where the journey home turns into a punishment, because Polyphemus is a son of Poseidon and asks his father for revenge.

Stop 3: The Bag of Winds

The wind god Aeolus gives Odysseus all the unfavourable winds tied in a bag. With only the good wind behind them the fleet actually reaches the coast of Ithaca — they can see the fires burning.

And then the men, who believe there is gold in the bag, open it while their captain sleeps. Every storm at once, and back to the beginning.

Odysseus and the Bag of Winds is the bitterest stop and surprisingly memorable for children: what stops them is not a monster, it is mistrust among friends.

The stops we have not recorded yet

• The Laestrygonians — giants who destroy almost the whole fleet
• Circe — the enchantress who turns his men into pigs
• The Underworld — where Odysseus speaks with the dead to learn the way home
• The Sirens — the song that lures ships onto rocks. Odysseus has himself tied to the mast so he can hear it and survive
• Scylla and Charybdis — a strait with a monster on each side. The phrase "between Scylla and Charybdis" comes from here
• Calypso — the nymph he stays with for seven years

How long it really takes

A point that almost always gets lost and that helps children grasp the scale: Odysseus is away for twenty years in total. Ten of war, ten of getting back.

His son Telemachus was a baby when he left. When his father returns, Telemachus is a grown man who has never seen him. Penelope has spent twenty years not knowing whether her husband is alive.

Give children that number and the whole story changes. It stops being an adventure series and starts to hurt. An eight-year-old immediately works out how old they would be in twenty years — and understands that coming home is the real subject, not the monsters.

The ending, which is not where you think

The biggest misunderstanding about the Odyssey is that it ends when he arrives. In fact almost half the poem takes place on Ithaca after he lands.

Odysseus comes home disguised as a beggar, because his palace is full of men who want to marry his wife and are eating through his property. Nobody recognises him except his old dog, who catches his scent, wags his tail, and dies.

That scene is the most famous in the whole poem among adults, and it works with children too — though from about nine, and it is worth warning them.

The thread running through it

The Odyssey looks like a loose sequence of adventures. There is a pattern, though, and once children notice it they listen differently.

Almost every stop goes wrong because a human being does something human. The men eat the lotus because it tastes good. They open the bag because they suspect gold. Odysseus shouts his name because he wants credit. They slaughter the Sun god's cattle because they are hungry.

The monsters are not the problem — the monsters are nearly always beaten. What makes the journey take ten years is curiosity, mistrust, pride and hunger.

After three or four stories children start predicting it, and an adventure series has become a pattern. That is the moment mythology stops being entertainment and starts teaching something.

Where to start

1. The Trojan Horse — self-contained, gripping, introduces the character
2. Odysseus and the Cyclops — the strongest single story
3. The Bag of Winds — shorter, emotionally the densest

Then the rest of the mythology collection is ready: Medusa and Perseus, Theseus and the Minotaur and the other hero myths work the same way.

Read next: The "Nobody" trick explained · Who was Odysseus? · The Trojan Horse for kids

All the stories are in the mythology collection.