> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://mereorthodoxy.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What The Odyssey Teaches Us About Temptation - URL: https://mereorthodoxy.com/what-the-odyssey-teaches-us-about-temptation/ - Published: 2026-09-25T11:00:29.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-25T11:00:28.000Z - Description: Odysseus and his men know they cannot just sail by the sirens and hope their willpower and common sense will hold out against the sirens’ song. They have to prepare. - Author: Mere Orthodoxy - Tags: Lanta Davis, Culture, Film Reviews/Hollywood, Formation Who can resist a siren song? In my ten-plus years of teaching Homer’s *Odyssey*, the sirens almost always rank as one of my students’ most memorable passages. Considering the abundance of memes circulating that featured Matt Damon’s agonized face during the siren song, the Internet agrees. Out of all the monsters and strange encounters mentioned in the ancient story, the sirens are one of the most popular and enduring. The lotus may have gone the way of the flower itself (having been largely forgotten), but the sirens and their song have largely endured in the popular imagination. Each of Odysseus’s stages of the journey can be read metaphorically, but the sirens and their song are especially evocative. Here, with their alluring music and destructive intent, we get a glimpse of temptation. But the story doesn’t leave us to face the sirens on our own: it teaches how we might resist it. In Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the *Odyssey*, he doesn’t show us what the sirens look like or sound like. Instead, they remain shadowy figures, their song a mystery to the viewer. The choice may seem strange. If the power of the sirens is their song, why not let the viewers hear it? But Nolan’s choice to keep the scene vague and mysteries maintains a faithfulness to the original text of the *Odyssey*. The sirens are not simply seductresses who offer every sailor sex. What makes the sirens so powerful is that they change their song for each person who listens to it. They symbolize temptation, yes, but not everyone is tempted most by sex. No person will hear the exact same song because each song feeds on an individual’s desires and weaknesses. Each song promises exactly what that particular person wants most. For the Odysseus in Homer’s poem, they sing to make him an offer for what he craves most: knowledge. As a clever man with a naturally restless and curious mind, Odysseus finds the allure of knowing everything there is to know in the world so enticing he would have jumped off his boat if he hadn’t been tied up. Nolan keeps the sirens and their song mysterious, freeing him to focus instead on the consequences of their song. Odysseus desperately strains to free himself from the rope his men used to tie him to the ship. The only other man who hears their song couldn’t refuse their offer and jumps off the boat. Whether the sirens deliver what they promise is unclear. What is clear is that they deliver death. The bones of other sailors who could not resist their song litter the rocks all around them. Temptation, the *Odyssey* reminds us, may sound beautiful and sweet but ultimately destroys us. Odysseus and his men know they cannot just sail by the sirens and hope their willpower and common sense will hold out against the sirens’ song. They have to prepare. Just as the sirens teach us about the nature of temptation, the two strategies to resist the siren song help teach us how to resist temptation. The first option is to avoid temptation altogether. Odysseus’s men all plug their ears with wax so that they cannot hear the song at all. A recovering alcoholic, for instance, may need to avoid any places where alcohol may be served. They “plug their ears” by saying no to meeting friends out. The avoidance strategy has also been adopted by parents and teachers who take away phones from their teenagers. Or, to use my own temptation to eat my weight in dessert, I may decide not to keep or bake any cookies in the house. Temptation can hook a person in its first few notes, so sometimes, blocking out its song altogether is the only way to avoid succumbing to it. Odysseus, on the other hand, wants to listen to the siren song. He refuses to put wax in his ears and instead asks his men to tie him to the ship. That way, he can hear the song without giving into it. This method of resisting temptation relies on restraint. The ropes bind him to the mast so that he need not rely on his own willpower. Avoidance may not always be possible, so learning restraint in the face of temptation requires outside checks, our own system of binding ourselves with ropes. For the recovering alcoholic who wants to go a friend’s birthday party, perhaps they plan to call a sober friend twice to check in. For a technology addiction, maybe it’s setting timers for screen time that lock us out when the clock runs down. To prevent me from eating an entire tray of cookies, I sometimes ask my husband to allot two a day for me and hide the rest. Having clear restraints helps us to face our temptation without giving into it. When temptation has the strongest hold over us, avoidance may be the only wise way. But there may be occasions when avoidance risks us sacrificing greater virtues or goods. Relying solely on avoidance risks the potential pratfalls of legalism. Traditionally, the Christian understanding of temperance uses a similar metaphor to Odysseus’s binding himself: the bridle. A bridle helps keep a horse in check, just as temperance requires us to keep our passions in check. The bridle, like Odysseus’s ropes, acts as a form of self-restraint. By thinking of our desires as a horse, it reminds us that our passions are not inherently bad: they just need to be restrained and trained. After all, if everyone simply avoids sex, we’d quickly make ourselves extinct. Temperance seeks to put our desires into proper bounds, so that they are not directionless and wild, but like a well-trained horse that goes where and when it’s directed. Clement of Alexandria, one of the early church fathers, interpreted the *Odyssey* allegorically and adds another layer to understanding the siren scene by comparing Odysseus’s mast to the cross. “Sail past the song,” Clement advises, for “it works death.” If we are “bound to the wood of the cross,” he tells us, then we “shall be freed from destruction.” Clement expands the siren scene to become a metaphor for salvation more broadly. Sin tempts us toward death and destruction, but when we hold onto the cross, Jesus frees sin’s hold over us. As clever as Odysseus’s two strategies to resist the siren song are, a third way to survive the sirens is so ingenious that it’s astonishing the famously cunning hero didn’t think of it himself. Ancient mythology tells us there is at least one other ship who successfully sails past the sirens. In the story of Jason and the Argonauts, a musician named Orpheus sails on the ship, and when they approach the sirens, Orpheus plays his lyre and sings a song, using his own music to drown out the song of the sirens. This strategy for overcoming the siren song is one of the most advanced and helpful for resisting temptation, because it reminds us that true beauty triumphs over false beauty. If we are already occupied by something beautiful and good, we will be less tempted by the empty allure of temptation. The recovering alcoholic no longer finds booze as tempting when they discover new habits and hobbies they love doing to replace all the time that used to be dedicated to drinking. The phone addict may eventually learn to replace scrolling with reading good books. I helped to curb my insatiable craving for cookies by allotting myself a small piece of dark chocolate after dinner. We will probably need all three of these ways to resist temptation at some point in our lives, but I can’t help but think that in this one instance, Odysseus has perhaps been outwitted, and the ultimate aim of temperance is to become like Orpheus. Clement describes the siren song as “music for the common ear,” suggesting there is a much more beautiful song Christians should be tuning their ears to hear. The beauty of God’s song should so captivate us that our hearts do not long to hear the false notes of the siren’s. True beauty means our loves and desires are rightly ordered and harmonious, so that each “note” is in its correct place. When our ears are trained to hear true beauty, it won’t want to settle for anything less. By directing our attention to real beauty, we follow Paul’s advice in Philippians 4:8: Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” When we focus on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable, we won’t need to make Matt Damon’s agonized face in the midst of temptation, for we will be so enchanted by excellent and praiseworthy things that we can sail on by temptation, blissfully content with the music we already hear, as we journey on to our eternal homecoming.