American Odyssey (What an Ancient Story Reveals about Our Divided Souls)

How the Odyssey illuminates the two sides of the American mind, from one of our most influential cultural commentators.

The Odyssey is among the oldest-known written works. Yet it is somehow profoundly contemporary. Its themes are inescapably human: the desire to strike out for new adventures; the aspiration to be more than human; the temptation to wallow in beastlike torpor; the impulse to exact vengeance; the possibility that mercy might bring a violent cycle to an end.

Surprisingly, as the celebrated political philosopher Patrick Deneen explains in this eye-opening book, the Odyssey is also the most American of ancient texts. Like Odysseus, Americans have two fundamental impulses: we are a people simultaneously animated by commitments to being at home and leaving home. Deneen shows us that the deep ambivalence at the heart of the Odyssey is also our own—as some of our greatest books and films attest, from Huckleberry Finn to The Wizard of Oz to Field of Dreams to It’s a Wonderful Life.

The coincidence of the United States semiquincentennial and the release of the blockbuster film The Odyssey affords a remarkable opportunity to explore the deep similarities between the ancient Greek epic and the American character. With his characteristic insight, Deneen reveals how Americans’ Western inheritance contains a paradox, and a set of tensions, that remain at the core of our divided souls.