A man is kept away from his home for many years; Poseidon is watching him with a jealous eye, and he is alone. The state of affairs at home is that his wealth is being squandered by his wife’s suitors, and plots are being laid against his son’s life. After being buffeted by many storms he returns home and reveals his identity; he falls upon his enemies and destroys them but preserves his own life. There you have the essential story of the Odyssey; the rest of the poem is made up of episodes.
Aristotle, Poetics 1455b
The bare bones of this story, as Aristotle lays them out, are promising. But what has the poet—tradition calls him Homer––done to flesh out this outline, to make this version, rather than all the versions told for centuries before him, of the Odysseus-story so gripping that for over 2,500 years we, like Aristotle, return to it again and again?
By the seventh century BCE, this Homeric Odyssey had been illustrated on Greek vases. By the sixth century BCE it had been recorded in writing. In this last century it has been adapted, more than once, for the screen, and now by British-American director Christopher Nolan. And in recent years we have seen two new translations into English—Emily Wilson in 2017 and Daniel Mendelsohn in 2025.
How has the poet achieved this?
The answer lies in the way that this poet has presented his ‘episodes’ and the way that we as audience members respond to them. Thanks to insights from studies of human cognition, we can identify precisely how certain storytelling strategies make their impact on an audience.
The first half of the Odyssey includes the fantastic action-packed adventures that Odysseus experiences on his homeward journey: these include memorable encounters with the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens, and Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Each episode makes its impact on us through a narrative of lively action as the hero struggles to survive.
Here is the moment, for example, when Odysseus and his men blind the Cyclops:
They took the olive spear, its tip all sharp,
And shoved it into his eye. I leaned on top
And twisted it, as when a man drills wood
For shipbuilding. . . . and so we whirled
The fire-sharp weapon in his eye.
(Od. 9.382-388, trans. Emily Wilson)
The poet insists on action. Odysseus and his men shove and lean and twist and whirl this olive-stake. And, as we audience-members encounter those words or watch that sequence on screen, so-called ‘mirror neurons’ in our cerebral cortex are activated.
Thus we too, through this sensory-motor activation, ‘perform’ those actions. A good storyteller, taking advantage of this natural cognitive propensity of ours, stirs in us a sense not only of ‘being there’ but also of ‘doing that’.
Now for something different…
Having drawn us into the tale through these fantastical episodes, the poet now makes us work a little harder. The second half of this tale sees Odysseus in his palace on Ithaca. In disguise as a beggar, he tests the loyalty of his household—including his wife—as he prepares to take revenge on the suitors who have occupied his palace, courting his wife and tormenting his son.
The poet now presents us with scenes of quiet reconnaissance as Odysseus schemes and makes his plans. And we must follow the action attentively. We observe the hero as he reads the minds and assesses the intentions of those about him. And we ourselves must read the hero’s own mind, and parse out his intentions, as he plans to re-establish himself in his palace.
In our everyday lives, we all develop cognitive skills to understand and relate to one another, known as Theory of Mind or “mind-reading”. We learn to recognize our own mental states and to form intuitions about the mental states of others. We use these skills in our daily interactions. A good story offers us further opportunity to practise mind-reading—and to find pleasure in “figuring it out”.
In the climactic scene of the epic, the suitors have been despatched and Odysseus, no longer in disguise, presents himself to Penelope as her husband. But she hesitates. She needs certainty that this man is who he claims to be.
As the poet tells it, Penelope has already hinted at the direction their conversation should take. She had remarked to her son that there are ‘signs’ known only to herself and her husband. Odysseus noted the prompt. He is tired, he says a little later, and asks an attendant to make up a bed. Although we don’t know where this conversation is heading, Odysseus is apparently confident that he does. He has their marriage-bed in mind.
Penelope’s response is unexpected. Agreeing to his request, she proposes that the marriage-bed be moved from her chamber specifically for the guest. Odysseus promptly explodes. We learn only now the shared secret of this bed.
Odysseus himself had built the bed into the bole of an olive tree. It was designed to be immovable. On observing his shocked surprise at her proposal and his pride in his bed’s construction, Penelope joyfully recognizes, acknowledges, and welcomes, her husband.
As audience members, we have quite a bit of cognitive work to do here. We have to resolve our surprise at Odysseus’s outburst and the revelation regarding the marriage-bed. And as we quickly review the scene in the light of this new knowledge, as we engage in mind-reading, we understand the initial collaboration of the hero and his remarkably like-minded wife, and her own genius for throwing her husband off-balance, as they work towards the goal they hold in common––reunion.
Studies in cognition enable us to trace the reasons why this vivid, action-packed narration of Odysseus’s fraught homeward journey makes such an urgent impact on us even today. They enable us to understand how it is that we can supply the intentions behind the words exchanged by the poet’s characters—and why we find such pleasure in filling these gaps and achieving understanding.
