SOURCE: "Characterization," in Homer on Life and Death, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1980, pp. 50-80.

In the following essay, Griffin addresses the issue of inconsistent characterization in the Odyssey, contending that the complexity of the characters gives them "depth and significance."

Lesky Compares the Structure of the Odyssey to That of the Iliad (1957-58):

The Odyssey, like the Iliad, has a very compressed time-scale: all the events occur within forty days. But this concentration is effected by very different means. In the Iliad the wrath theme forms a solid core round which all the other elements are ultimately wrapped. This is concentration in the truest sense: the way in which the fates of Achilles, Patroclus and Hector are bound up one with another and with the central wrath motif allows us to speak of a weaving together of several thematic strands in a manner that is not parallelled...