One aspect of Homer's the Odyssey that steers the growth of Odysseus and Telemachus is the way he chooses to narrate his poem. As with any story or poem, the narrator provides the reader with guidance toward where the writer wants their story to go, however as Scott Richardson points out in his paper titled, "The Devious Narrator of the Odyssey," the narrator may use narration to create a feeling of suspense and doubt in his readers of where the storyline is heading, which Richardson writes is exactly what Homer does in his poem. Scott Richardson's "The Devious Narrator of the Odyssey" was published in April of 2006 in The Classical Journal, an academic journal that is published by The Classical Association of the Middle West and South whose …show more content…
An example of this is his quoting of James V. Morrison’s work on the narration of another epic poem written by Homer, the Iliad. He compares the “strategy of misdirection” in the poem and quotes him by writing, “Ultimately Homer uses misdirection to draw the audience closer to the central problem faced by characters in the Iliad: mortal expectation and miscalculation” (qtd. in Morrison 338). The comparison of narrators in both poems by Homer proves how he is prone to having his narrators mislead his readers, “Morrison's analysis focuses on knowledge of upcoming events and the narrator's hand in misleading the audience. The narrator or a deity makes a prediction that turns out to be false or is fulfilled much later than we are led to expect or in a different manner. We are thereby put in the same position as characters who assume a future course of events that does not occur, and our similarity of perspective encourages the audience's sympathy with the mortal characters and their limited knowledge” (Richardson 338). Using secondary sources such as this one help emphasize Richardson’s thesis of Homer’s epic poem utilizing a narrator who is deceptive toward his readers that in turn plays into the pathos of the