Famous Dreams: Penelope's Geese

This is the first post in a series of famous dreams.

In Homer's The Odyssey, Odysseus's wife Penelope has been awaiting the return of her husband for 20 years. During that time, she has been visited by many suitors wishing her hand in marriage. She is torn between waiting for her husband--who may never return--and marrying a suitor.

She asks a stranger (who is really Odysseus in disguise) to interpret the following dream:

I have twenty geese about the house that eat mash out of a trough, and of which I am exceedingly fond. I dreamed that a great eagle came swooping down from a mountain, and dug his curved beak into the neck of each of them till he had killed them all. Presently he soared off into the sky, and left them lying dead about the yard; whereon I wept in my room till all my maids gathered round me, so piteously was I grieving because the eagle had killed my geese. Then he came back again, and perching on a projecting rafter spoke to me with human voice, and told me to leave off crying. "Be of good courage," he said, "daughter of Ikarios; this is no dream, but a vision of good omen that shall surely come to pass. The geese are the suitors, and I am no longer an eagle, but your own husband, who am come back to you, and who will bring these suitors to a disgraceful end." On this I woke, and when I looked out I saw my geese at the trough eating their mash as usual.

The disguised Odysseus interprets the dream literally, explaining that he has returned and will kill all of the suitors.

Also see The Symbolism of Penelope’s Geese by J C Geissman, for an alternative explanation.


Sources:

"On the Interpretation of Dreams and Signs in Homer" by Louise Pratt
"The Symbolism of Penelope's Geese" by J C Geissmann