The older I get, the more juvenile the rational explanations for war seem to me; I am instead drawn to mythology, such as the competing gods that animate Homer’s work.
Therefore, I was chagrined to learn that Christopher Nolan, in his new epic rendition of Homer’s “The Odyssey,” has largely eliminated the mythological element. According to the Guardian, “The only god Nolan depicts is Athena (Zendaya), who appears as a vision seen only by Odysseus (Matt Damon).”
I think that’s a shame because, like it or not, the important aspects of life can’t be understood through rational discourse. Throughout human history, we have filled this gap by conjuring up rich mythologies that are psychologically accurate and sustaining, even if not factually true. That’s why I like Jungian psychology, which is based on this premise.
In Homer’s “The Odyssey,” Ares, the god of war, loves every blood-drenched moment of armed combat — the more gore and severed heads, the better. Homer contrasts Ares with Aphrodite, who is the embodiment of love and beauty.
Early in my psychotherapy career, soon after graduate school in the 1990s, I found myself thrust into counseling combat vets in the VA, long before I was aware of Jungian psychology. Out of desperation, to make sense of the sheer horror of war, I concocted my own myth — not only for the sake of the patient but for me.
The idea was to address the overwhelming guilt and anxiety felt by returning veterans stemming from always being on guard because no place was safe in Vietnam. And whatever action you took to protect yourself probably was wrong.
How does one come to terms with deadly violence that could take place anywhere in Vietnam, not only in combat but by stepping on a landmine that could be anywhere or getting shot by a sniper while on R&R at China Beach in Danang?
It was too much for a 19-year-old kid to comprehend, or anyone else for that matter.
I came up with a story that soothed both me and the patient. I told them war wasn’t personal: In the heat of the moment, it was all right, whether you were pumped up with bloodlust or paralyzed by fear. I told them the responsibility for the situation was far above their pay grade.
Don’t try to make sense of it because there was no rhyme or reason for it.
I told them war was a gigantic Tyrannosaurus rex that had been set loose on the land, and wherever his clawed feet landed, soldiers screamed in pain, bled out and died. It was that terrible monster that was responsible for the carnage — not a 19-year, fuzz-faced kid who just graduated from high school.
I wasn’t able to put the whole picture together until many years later, when I was gobsmacked at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon by Max Ernst’s painting, Fireside Angel. It evoked in me the same feelings of chaos and destruction as what I felt in Nam and felt later when counseling vets. Ernst’s painting depicts war as it really is: a mythological element and implacable force in the human condition.
One final experience of mine that delivered me into the realm of mythology.
Poseidon, the god of the sea, conjured up huge storms that delayed Odysseus’s return home by 10 years, the last of which left him shipwrecked and thrown naked ashore on Scheria. Poseidon was seeking revenge because Odysseus had blinded his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus. When I was in Vietnam, it was like the gods were pissed off because the U.S. was pulverizing Vietnam, a small, impoverished, third-world country.
I know when I served there, I wasn’t mythologically or spiritually inclined until our ship was caught in Super Typhoon Kit, the seventh-largest ever recorded, with maximum winds of 195 miles per hour. My sense of self shrank to the size of a flea in the eye of a force immeasurably larger than me.
Mircea Eliade, one of the 20th century’s most important thinkers on world religions, would call my transformation a “hierophany,” which happens when the mundane transforms into the sacred.
I’m still excited to see Nolan’s new movie about Odysseus, but I’ll miss the mythological elements that would make it feel really real to me.
Jean Stimmell, retired stone mason and psychotherapist, lives in Northwood and blogs at jstim.substack.com.