Watching The Odyssey made me think of “Memphis.”
Memphis itself doesn’t really matter. What matters is how I got here.
Ithaca is home, of course. But maybe “home” is less a place than the place where you are most fully yourself. Or maybe Ithaca is not who you used to be, but after everything you’ve been through, who you still choose to be.
So Ithaca, like Memphis, can be a stand-in for wherever you finally recognize yourself. And the Odyssey is how you got there.
Maybe the real question of The Odyssey is: After everything, what does “home” still mean to him?
And if you return to the place you once called home, only to find that you no longer recognize the person who left it— is that still a homecoming?