Characters
- Antinous — chief mocker; proposes delay
- Eumaeus — swineherd; recognizes and is posted
- Leodes — first to fail at the bow
- Lyssa — inspires Penelope’s plan
- Odysseus — beggar who strings and shoots; signals Telemachus
- Suitors — fail to string the bow
- Telemachus — sets the contest; fetches the bow
Places
- Odysseus’s palace hall — axes set; bow stringing
- Storeroom — where Penelope keeps the bow
Themes
Narrative
Athena puts it in Penelope’s mind to set Odysseus’s bow as the contest: whoever strings it and shoots through twelve axe-sockets will take her as wife. She fetches the bow and axes weeping; Telemachus sets the sockets in line. The suitors fail in turn—Leodes first, then others; Antinous proposes deferring to a feast-day of Apollo. Odysseus, still in beggar’s guise, asks to try; Antinous mocks, but Penelope and Telemachus insist. Eumaeus and Philoetius weep at the bow’s sight; Odysseus reveals himself to them in private and posts them at doors. Telemachus nearly strings it, then yields by sign. Odysseus strings the bow as easily as a bard strings a lyre, plucks the string so it sings, and shoots clean through the axes. He nods to Telemachus, who arms; the contest has become the signal for war in the hall.
Book 21 is the hinge from trial to vengeance: the household’s tokens (bow, loyal servants) separate the true king from the suitors’ failed manhood.