The bow has hung in the storeroom for twenty years. It is Odysseus’s weapon, made for his draw, and no man in the hall but him has ever bent it. Penelope sets the contest like a final delay. Whoever can string the bow and shoot through the line of twelve axes takes her hand. The suitors come at it eager and one by one they fail. They twist their forearms, they sweat through their fine clothes, they curse, they hand the bow to the next man with laughter that gets thinner each time. The wood will not bend. The string will not sing. [SPOILER: The beggar by the hearth asks to try. Antinous mocks him. Telemachus cuts in: let him try. Odysseus picks up the bow and turns it slowly in his hands and the suitors think he’s looking for cracks like a man at a market, slow, methodical, that means he’ll fail like the rest. Then he raises it, sets the nock, draws the string, and the string sings. The contest the suitors thought was about marriage was always a weapons check. They disarmed themselves to win her. Now the only armed man in the hall is the one they spent years insulting.]
The Bow Contest
String the bow. Shoot an arrow through twelve axes. The hand that does it gets Penelope. Only one man alive can do it.