Katabasis in Myth and Film

Homer mentions the haze that builds in the sky which indicates to me that Odysseus has not found a place in his own world where the underworld exists but has instead passed into another spiritual world.

The underworld is a strange place. When Homer was describing it, it seems almost like a dream. The rules of a dream world – of lack thereof – seem to apply as well. In the underworld, everything is an extreme – the endless hunger, the endless thirst, forever pushing a bolder up a mountain, having birds of prey peck at your liver for all of eternity. It is not a place that can exist in the real world. It is part of why the journey for Odysseus is so arduous, and why he must do so much to get there. He is not meant to be there, for he is a physical being. It is also why, I think, he sees so much of the structure of the underworld, and so little of the actual place. Just like in dreams, you know the story, but what you see does not always follow.

Homer mentions the haze that builds in the sky which indicates to me that Odysseus has not found a place in his own world where the underworld exists but has instead passed into another spiritual world”.(lpage)

When Homer wrote of Odysseus arriving in the Underworld he explained how the ship came to the “deep-running Ocean” and described how it was “hidden in fog and cloud.” This haze acted like a barrier separating the Underworld. Other descriptions that Homer used to add to the description of this spiritual world included line 15 “nor does Helios, the radiant sun, ever break through the dark, to illuminate them with his shining.” The Underworld, therefore, is portrayed as a spirit world surrounded by rivers, always in darkness or shadow due to the haze, with a diverse landscape. Homer elaborated on the atmosphere by saying in line 19 that “always a glum night is spread over wretched mortals,” but he never fully described the landscape. We are given the impression that the land apparently had a type of soil because Odysseus dug a pit. He, however, was near the shore and therefore we only get glimpses of the rest of the Underworld. The spirits seem to come out of the darkness and following their retreat Odysseus sees Orion in the meadow of asphodel rounding up animals he had killed, Tityos lying in a plain, Tantalos standing in lake water with trees bearing fruit over his head, and Sisyphos on the hill. These features make the Underworld appear like the land where those that are still living reside, but again these are only glimpses Odysseus gets from the outer edge. The inhabitants of the Underworld are not like the living. Those that had passed on needed to drink blood to respond to Odysseus. This ritual of drinking blood was termed by Teiresias to allow them to speak the truth to Odysseus. The spirits were not as they had used to be, but as mentioned in line 219 “the sinews no longer hold the flesh and the bones together, and once the spirit has left the white bones, all the rest of the body is made subject to the fire’s strong fury, but the soul flitters out like a dream and flies away.” So the Underworld is characterized first by the haze and rivers that surround it in darkness. This atmosphere is furthered by Odysseus remaining unknowing about the majority of the world. He saw areas with similar trees and lands, but everything else is kept in mystery. The spirits seem to appear and disappear from and in the darkness and Odysseus is also often fearful of this unknown. The Underworld only resembles his world but is a different spiritual world with unseen unique lands and inhabitants.