‘The Odyssey’ is an ancient tale that also serves as a great American epic

American moviegoers are packing theaters this weekend for “The Odyssey,” Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster— an entirely fitting way to extend and deepen their July 4th celebrations honoring the Declaration of Independence.

That’s because the director’s source material, Homer’s 2,500-year-old poetic masterpiece, portrays an ancient human tale that to Americans feels deeply familiar.

Nolan’s film tells not only the story of Odysseus, but the story of the American soul.

Odysseus’ narrative is that of a wanderer who seeks his homecoming.

Following the brutal conclusion of the Trojan War, he is among the victorious Greeks who depart the shores of Troy, only to encounter great travails in their journeys home.

For Odysseus, the circuitous trip back to his island of Ithaca takes 10 grueling years.

Along the way, he encounters extraordinary creatures: beasts, gods, monsters, even the drug-doling Lotus-eaters.

His curiosity leads him into the deadly cave of the Cyclops; he is enchanted by the goddess Circe and nearly forgets his goal; he almost throws himself overboard to hear the enticing song of the Sirens.

Yet in spite of every temptation to chase perfect knowledge, unending pleasure and even immortality, his heart remains at home.

That’s the American story: More than the inhabitants of any other nation, Americans are seekers and explorers, pioneers and pathfinders, trailblazers and astronauts.

Most Americans can trace their presence on this continent to forebears who picked up stakes from somewhere else to seek out a new land, who departed from the familiar for the unknown, to seek a more promising future for themselves.

Yet at the same time, those same forebears came here to make a home, to settle, to put down roots.

That’s why I call “The Odyssey” the most American of ancient texts: If we look closely, we see in it an image of ourselves in the portrayal of a man who is simultaneously an explorer and a home-seeker.

We see this duality in the Founding generation — indeed, our first president and national hero embodied it.

As a young man George Washington keenly surveyed the unknown lands to the west and sought to open the frontier to European exploration.

His patriotism compelled him to repeatedly leave Virginia and heed his country’s call when needed, whether to lead troops into battle or to serve as president in New York and Philadelphia.

Yet throughout his life he unwaveringly expressed his devotion to his beloved Mount Vernon home, and openly longed to return there.

“I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world,” he reportedly said.

Shortly before Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he composed a pamphlet that contributed to his fame and led John Adams to appoint him to be the Declaration’s lead author.

In “The Summary Rights of British America,” Jefferson enumerated God-given rights that he later listed in America’s founding document, life and liberty among them.

He also emphasized another right about which we hear much less: the right to free movement.

All people, Jefferson wrote, possess the right “of departing from the country in which chance, not choice, has placed them, of going in quest of new habitations, and of there establishing new societies, under such laws and regulations as to them shall seem most likely to promote public happiness.”

Thus did Jefferson describe two ideals that have come to define America: our freedom to go elsewhere, and the importance of settling down and making a home.

These paired themes of exploration and homecoming pervade both “The Odyssey” and America’s self-understanding.

The tale of a man who avidly seeks out new experiences but maintains his commitment to home and family resonates because its themes have found a distinctive, intensified expression here.

In fact, the very discovery of the New World was widely understood as an Odyssean undertaking.

As Columbus sailed west, eventually to encounter a new continent, European intellectuals widely described his courageous voyage as a new version of Odysseus’ journeys.

To their minds, it was Odysseus who metaphorically discovered America.

Two weeks after cheering America’s semiquincentennial, it’s important to recall the complexity of the American story — and our divided national soul.

While July 4th rightly underscores the primacy of freedom, of liberty, and of the right to pursue our own happiness through freedom of movement, our Odyssean inheritance reminds us that we are also a people of loyalty, devotion, sacrifice and love of family, friends and places.

If it’s a coincidence that we encounter anew the Odyssean elements in our own tradition in the same month we celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday, it is a happy one.

Patrick J. Deneen is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and author of “American Odyssey: What an Ancient Story Reveals About Our Divided Souls.”