[SPOILER: Odysseus walks up to the vineyard where his father has retreated from the world. Laertes is on his knees in the dirt of his vines, in the clothes of a servant, mourning a son he believes is dead. Odysseus tests him cruelly first, with one of the Cretan lies, and watches the old man tear his clothes and sink to the earth. Then he shows the boar scar and says his name. Laertes stares. The transformation in his face is like watching the sun come up. They hold each other in the vineyard and the vines hang still around them, and when Telemachus comes up the path he stops and sees them and the image arrives whole: three generations together at last. The line that has been broken for twenty years stands intact for the first time. It is one of the only quiet joys in the back half of the poem. Not victory. Not justice. Just three men of one blood standing in the same row of vines.]
Three Generations
Laertes, Odysseus, Telemachus. Grandfather, father, son. Standing together in the vineyard for the first time in twenty years.