ELIZABETH ELLAMES

The Lens of the Observer: Why There Is No “Right Way” to Experience The Odyssey

There is a belief I hold deeply, both as a storyteller and as a student of human consciousness: all art is experienced through the lens of the observer. Not only is this inevitable, I would say it is the very purpose of art itself.

Art does not exist as a fixed object with a singular meaning. It is a living exchange between the creation and the consciousness encountering it. It meets us where we are. It reflects us, challenges us, expands us—or sometimes simply confirms what we already know. And this is not a flaw in the process. It is the design.

With the recent adaptation of The Odyssey into film, directed by Christopher Nolan, I’ve been reflecting on this more deeply. I have never read The Odyssey in its original form, yet I do understand archetypes. And when I view this story through that archetypal and symbolic lens, what I see is a vast and intricate tapestry of human consciousness.

The sea becomes more than a setting—it is the unconscious. The monsters are not merely external threats—they are shadow aspects of the psyche. The hero is not just a man on a journey—he is the embodiment of endurance, identity, and transformation. The mother, the queen, the son, the prince, the goddess, the villain, the coward—they are all present because they live within us.

Of course they are there. This is why the story has endured.

These archetypal patterns are not learned—they are remembered. They are embedded within us, part of our internal architecture. So when we sit in a cinema and watch a story like The Odyssey, we are not simply observing it. We are participating in it. We are interpreting it through our own lived experiences, our own emotional landscape, our own stage of awareness.

And here is where I feel something important needs to be acknowledged.

When I see academic or critical analysis attempting to define a “correct” interpretation of such a story; framing it in terms of right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, I find it intrusive. Not because analysis has no value, but because it can, at times, override the very essence of storytelling.

Storytelling is not a fixed equation to be solved. It is a mirror.

Even Homer, which is often referred to as possibly being a collective of storytellers, in writing The Odyssey, was interpreting through his or their own lens, his or their own cultural context, his or their consciousness, and own understanding of the human condition. The story itself was never neutral. It was never singular.

So why, now, do we insist that it must be?

To impose a rigid framework onto a living story is to limit its capacity to evolve through the people experiencing it. It narrows something that was always meant to be expansive.

Every person who watches this film will see something different. One will resonate with the hero. Another will feel the pain of the mother. Another will recognise the coward within themselves. Another will see only the spectacle. All of these responses are valid.

Because all of these responses are revealing something real.

Art is not here to tell us what to think. It is here to show us who we are.

And perhaps the more powerful question is not, “Did they get the story right?” but rather, “What did the story awaken in me?”

That is where the true value lies and where consciousness expands.

And that, I believe, is the real intention of the art of storytelling. 

Heart to Heart, Elizabeth