This scene made me aware of my own base qualities, a bloodthirsty spectator no better than the suitors. I wanted Odysseus to trounce Irus, and he did. I keep wondering if the very idea of 'hero' is what's actually being problematized throughout The Odyssey, as the self-aware, self-critiquing reader is obliged to continually scrutinize their own relationship to what constitutes "goodness."

To be honest, I last read it in high school, and there are wide swaths of it that simply didn't sink in for whatever reason. This reading is far more rewarding.