Now is the Age of Culture What Did Odysseus Destroy?

Leaving the theater after watching director Christopher Nolan's "Odyssey," the word "homecoming" came to mind before "return." I thought it was a story about going back to one's homeland, but after the film ended, I found myself wondering what it means to return.

Odysseus is a hero of the Trojan War. He is the strategist who led the war to victory and the king of Ithaca. Yet in Nolan's film, the first thing that stands out about him is not the grandeur of a hero. It is the fatigue and guilt of someone who has endured war for a long time. What made him this way?

The film places the answer between "Zeus's Law" and the Trojan Horse.

In ancient Greece, welcoming a stranger as a guest was an important custom. One provided food and shelter, and the guest would not harm the host. This reciprocal obligation between host and guest is called xenia. Zeus was regarded as the god who upheld this order of hospitality.

Nolan revives this ancient custom in the film through the term "Zeus's Law." What is interesting is that Odysseus is the very person who violated that law.

The Trojan Horse is his most brilliant stratagem. He hid soldiers inside the horse and brought them into Troy's walls, ending the war. Yet in the film, Odysseus does not remember this act merely as glory.

The horse, accepted as a gift of peace, became an instrument of massacre. He toppled his opponent by exploiting their trust. It was a strategy that brought victory in war. But after the war ended, can one remember it only that way?

What Odysseus repeatedly confronts in his heart may well be that very moment. For something he believes is right, is it acceptable to exploit even what the other person trusts? Before this question, Odysseus is no longer a simple hero.

He is both a victim of war and someone who waged it. He lost comrades and wandered far from home for many years, yet he was also the architect of Troy's destruction. Nolan does not erase either of these two faces.

This is also why the scene with the Sirens is so striking.

The Sirens do not appear to be merely seductive beings. They are more like voices that replay what Odysseus wanted to forget. The lost people, the broken promises, the life before the war. What he yearns for may not be only the land of Ithaca. Perhaps he yearns for who he was before the war began. But time does not turn back.

One can return home, but not return to who one was before leaving.

It is the same when he takes up the bow again. To reclaim his home, he summons forth the warrior's body and skills once more. There is an irony in it: a person who returned after ending a war must again take up sword and bow to preserve an ordinary life. Thus this film's homecoming is not a simple return. It is about going home carrying the time one has lived through.

This ancient story is not unfamiliar in today's world.

Even now, wars are occurring all over the globe. Each war has its justifications. People say it is to protect the nation, to pursue justice, or to prevent greater sacrifice. But as wars drag on, things happen that are difficult to explain with the original justifications alone. The moment one designates the other as an enemy, human promises are easily pushed aside. This is where the anguish of the irreversible destruction and death that Odysseus inflicted comes to mind.

Does the purpose we believe is right grant us the right to disregard the other's humanity?

This seems to be why Nolan invokes "Zeus's Law." It is not a grandiose rule. It is to open one's door to a stranger, to refrain from harming a guest, to keep one's promises. It is ancient common sense: people can live together only if there is a premise that they can trust one another.

War demolishes such common sense first. And once trust collapses, it does not return through victory alone.

In the final scene, Odysseus returns to Ithaca. He meets Penelope and encounters his son Telemachus. It is the home he has long awaited.

Yet he boards a ship again. Only after seeing this scene does the film's title come across somewhat differently. For Odysseus, homecoming was not where everything ended.

He must live on after returning. He cannot forget what came before. He must spend the remaining time carrying what he has done and its consequences.

The sea is beside him from beginning to end. At first, it was the path that blocked his return home; at the end, it becomes the path he must travel again.

What Odysseus destroyed was not Troy alone. What he exploited for his war victory was the trust between people.

When that trust collapses, the boundary between enemy and ally shifts. No one can trust the other's good intentions. The collapse of civilization begins not when great city walls fall, but when these small promises disappear one by one.

In that sense, "Odyssey" is not a story celebrating a hero's victory. It is the story of one human being who cannot forget what he did even after victory.

And it asks us today: which is more difficult—winning in war or living as a human being after the war ends?

Odysseus has finally returned home. But what he returned to was not the world before the war.

Homecoming has ended, but the time he carries has not.

Perhaps that is also why Nolan shows the sea again at the end. Life continues even after the hero's story ends. And in that life, what remains longest may not be the memory of victory, but the memory of what one destroyed for what purpose.