Twenty years after leaving for the Trojan War, Odysseus fights his way home across a hostile sea only to find his kingdom overrun — and must return in disguise to reclaim his wife, his son, and his throne from the suitors laying siege to his house.

1. Scenes 1–9

   Ithaca frozen in a decade of waiting: Penelope weaving, the suitors feasting, Telemachus unheard.

2. Scenes 9–27

   Telemachus needs proof of his father's fate; Penelope needs the throne secured before the suitors force her hand.

3. Scenes 28–29

   Telemachus sails from Ithaca in secret, crossing into the unfamiliar world beyond his mother's house.

4. Scenes 30–144

   Odysseus's remembered ordeal — Troy, the Cyclops, Circe, Hades, Charybdis — paid for in men, ships, and years, while Telemachus searches the courts of Sparta.

5. Scene 145

   Odysseus makes landfall on Ithaca at last, alone but alive — what he wanted, stripped of everything else.

6. Just before
7. Scene 145

   Following Calypso's counsel to surrender to the storm rather than fight it, Odysseus sets out alone on a crude raft, pushed to sea by her.

8. Scene 146

   Adrift and nearly drowning on the raft, Odysseus finally lets go of the need to control his fate.

9. Scene 147

   Odysseus washes ashore on a foggy beach and Athena reveals to him that he has finally reached Ithaca.

10. Scene 148

    This scene