The Odyssey
Homer’s Odyssey lends Taylor Swift the language of the long journey home, of sirens and of endurance, its trials recast as the labour of love and return.
Appears in 6 songs
Associated with Homer
“And the tennis court was covered up With some tent-like thing”
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss how 'cowboy like me' begins in medias res, a technique Uncle Jerry directly connects to The Odyssey, where Odysseus washes up naked on a beach and tells his entire story in flashback. He notes the song uses the same device of dropping the listener into the middle of a story to create tension, though unlike The Odyssey it does not employ flashback.
“You're not my homeland anymore So what am I defending now?”
Uncle Jerry draws an extended parallel between Odysseus's exile from Ithaca and the male speaker's exile from the relationship. Both figures are cast out of their homeland, and the exile forces a reconstruction of identity. Uncle Jerry spends considerable time on how Odysseus's pride and hubris led to his exile, and how being stripped of everything forced him to recognise what he had lost, drawing a direct line to the song's speakers who are exiled from their relationship and must reckon with what went wrong. The masters were sold to a company named Ithaca Holdings, Scooter Braun's company, which acquired Big Machine Label Group (and Taylor's masters) in June 2019 before selling the masters on to Shamrock Capital in October 2020. The name ties the episode's own Odyssey homecoming frame to the masters reading through a documented fact rather than a resemblance.
“There were sirens in the beat of your heart”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the word 'sirens' as carrying lexical ambiguity, literally the sound of police sirens in a getaway-car chase, but also the sirens from Homer's Odyssey, monstrous women who sing to lure men onto the rocks. Uncle Jerry connects this to the monstrous femininity theme they have discussed in previous episodes, noting that the sirens are a sound of warning that the man in the song does not heed. He frames this as an intentional double meaning.
Angela & Uncle Jerry cite the Odyssey as one of the multiple classical texts in which Cassandra appears. Uncle Jerry also notes that the three Fates who weave the future on their dark looms appear in the Odyssey, connecting to Taylor's use of 'weaving nightmares' in the song.
“My spine split from carrying us up the hill”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify a possible Sisyphean reference in the image of carrying something up a hill. Uncle Jerry explains the myth of Sisyphus from the Odyssey, one of two Titans punished in Hades whose task is to roll a stone up a hill, with the promise of freedom if he reaches the top, but the stone grows larger and rolls back down before he can succeed. Angela initially recalls the image of someone carrying something heavy that breaks their spine, and Uncle Jerry identifies it as Sisyphus. They agree this may be a Sisyphean reference, the futile, endless labour of maintaining the relationship.
Angela & Uncle Jerry reference The Odyssey in the context of Jung's anima concept and Joseph Campbell's monomyth, Uncle Jerry notes that in the Odyssey, Odysseus's anima is clearly Athena, who serves as his spirit guide. This is used to support the interpretation that the second voice in evermore's bridge functions as an animus/spirit guide for the speaker.