An amazing retelling of the Odyssey is the novel by Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain. This wonderful novel is about a Confederate soldier named Inman who deserts the Civil War and makes his way back to the woman he left behind, Ada. This novel truly is a modern retelling of the Odyssey. It is very clear that Inman is Odysseus and Ada is Penelope. Inman faces many troubles on his journey home to Cold Mountain: he is pursued throughout his odyssey by the Home Guard, much like Poseidon pursues and attempts to hinder Odysseus' return home. Furthermore, at the beginning of Cold Mountain, while Inman is still in the infirmary, he spots a blind man selling peanuts. This character can be taken as Homer himself, whom historians believe was blind. Lastly, both Ada and Penelope back home are dealing with suitors, where while Penelope may have 108 suitors, Ada herself is being pursued by the town sheriff, Rudy. Throughout Cold Mountain there is much imagery and metaphors used, as well as the symbols of birds, which we have learned from the Iliad and Odysseys that bird signs were frequently interpreted as omens.
Great example! Edith Hall in "The Return of Odysseus", a book on the reception history of the Odyssey, calls Fraziers' Inman "the most sanitized Odysseus of all time" (2008, p. 180) because he, like all the other good characters in the book, hates violence and does not even feel the urge to take revenge on his rival, unlike the Homeric Odysseus. She also notices that Inman "refrains from sex with anybody until his reunion with Ada, despite opportunities in a whore-house and with an attractive young widow, alongside whom (implausibly) he sleeps fully clothed" (ibid.). Clearly we've got here less of an Odysseus character than a Civil War Socrates (who in Plato's "Symposium" resists the seduction attempts of Alcibiades and even sleeps in the same bed with him without touching him)!
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