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Recently, Mark Frost has confirmed in an interview that Homer’s Odyssey has served as an important inspiration during the writing of Twin Peaks: The Return. In this post, I would like to point out a few of the many parallels between this ancient Greek epic and The Return. It’s going to be a bit of a read, but I promise it will be yrev, very interesting. Rather than just listing superficial similarities, I will demonstrate that there is in fact a deep thematic affinity between the two works.
First off, I by no means claim a 1:1 correspondence. The Return examines the fractured nature of identity and reality in a way that fundamentally undermines the Odyssey’s relatively straight-forward narrative. As will be seen below, Cooper and Mr C at times act like nemeses, while at others they blend into one single enigmatic Odysseus-like figure. Dougie – a domesticated and corrupted Xerox copy of this dual ‘man of action’ – provides an uncomfortable counterpoint to the idealized Cooper that has for the last 25 years been part of pop culture’s pantheon. Similarly, Diane and her ‘tulpa’, the false double who has assumed her identity, bleed into one single Janus-headed figure. In the mythology of The Return, the human soul is as irreparably shattered as the atom – the supposedly indivisible particle of Greek philosophy.
I think it’s important to note that Frost’s approach to mythology is quite Jungian in outlook. The dealings of Twin Peaks’ ‘gods’ with the sublunar realm can be taken at face value, but they may also be understood as representations of a struggle that takes place within the human soul. For Jung, the final stage of personal growth and ‘individuation’ (becoming a whole person) takes place when we plunge the dark of our own unconscious mind to face the repressed aspects of our personality – our Shadow. The similarity of this doctrine to Twin Peak’s doppelganger mythos is hard to miss.
The theme of the Odyssey is Odysseus’ nostos, a word which can be translated as ‘return home’, coincidentally the very title of Twin Peaks’ third season. The term nostos is also appropriately related to the English word ‘nostalgia’ – the (not necessarily unpleasurable) longing for a lost world in which we felt at home. In the Odyssey, the eponymous hero has gone missing in action after fighting the Trojan War. He is presumed dead, yet for many years his wife Penelope waits faithfully for him to return to his native Ithaca. Meanwhile she is hounded by a throng of male suitors who have taken up residence in the palace. Consider that the person that Cooper seems to eventually come home to is Diane – of whose tulpa it is literally said that she has ‘many male suitors’. Cooper’s Ithaca is of course Twin Peaks itself, the place where it all began.
If the Trojan War represents the primal conflict that gives rise to Odysseus’ struggles to get home, then the events of the first two seasons of Twin Peaks may be considered this ancient war’s counterpart. If they are read this way, the role of Mr C as a ‘shadow Odysseus’ also becomes clearer, for just like the Trojan War was won when Odysseus conceived of the famous Trojan Horse – which smuggled soldiers into the city of Troy by hiding them inside its belly – the original run’s conflict was won by the forces of darkness when BOB was smuggled into the world hidden within Mr C. Interestingly, BOB seems to be on his own Odyssey. He too is driven by a desire to return home, which in his case is represented by the womb of the dark mother goddess who may double as his mate.
After the Trojan War, Odysseus’ attempts to return to Ithaca are for a long time thwarted by the sea god Poseidon, who has become enraged after Odysseus’ sea-faring crew blinded his son, the fearful cyclops Polyphemus. To avenge this wrong, Poseidon subjects Odysseus to a long series of (mis)adventures. Eventually the hero ends up on an island belonging to Calypso, who falls in love with him and keeps him captive for an extended period of time. Of course, Cooper’s return home after Twin Peaks’ season two is thwarted by his doppelganger, and as a result Cooper remains captive in the Lodge for many years.
If we consider Dougie to somehow represent a fragment of Cooper’s shattered self, rather than a mere automaton, then Cooper’s captivity is also expressed in Dougie’s depressing attempt to lead a regular human life in a failed housing project in Las Vegas. Just as Odysseus gets stuck in a domestic rut during his stint as Calypso’s lover, all the while dreaming of Greater Things, Cooper’s heroic destiny is suppressed by Dougie’s banality. Stuck in a loveless marriage, visiting prostitutes, gambling his family’s money away and barely being tolerated at work, Dougie represents the kind of spiritual death-in-life that Evelyn Waugh must have had in mind when he spoke of ‘a tiny bit of a man, pretending he is whole’.
Eventually, Odysseus is freed from his captivity through the agency of a powerful divine helper: the goddess Athene takes mercy on him and convinces Zeus – her father and the ruler god of Mount Olympus – that the hero should now be allowed to depart. It’s not difficult to see that Homer’s Athena and Zeus correspond in many ways to Twin Peaks’ deified version of Laura –whose face masks nothing but pure white light – and the enigmatic Fireman. Just like Athena is born from Zeus’ head, Laura emerges from the Fireman’s. Just like Athena releases Odysseus from his captivity, Laura tells Cooper that he is allowed to leave the lodge. Just like Zeus rules over Mount Olympus, the abode of the gods from whence they observe and govern the world of men, the Fireman watches us mortals and interferes in our lives from an otherworldly mountaintop castle. And just like Zeus is the god of lightning, the Fireman has harnessed the mysterious spiritual fire that Hawk reveals is somehow akin to modern day electricity. A link may also be suggested between the mythological sustenance of the Greek gods, ambrosia, and the corrupted spiritual food of Twin Peaks’ lodge beings. Garmonbozia: garbled, demonic ambrosia?
In the Odyssey, the practicalities of the hero’s escape from captivity are orchestrated by the messenger god Hermes – a magician-like figure who is able to move between the worlds by means of his winged sandals. Cooper’s return is similarly facilitated by MIKE, the messenger who ‘chants out between the worlds’, and who will keep providing supernatural advice during Cooper’s somnambulations through Dougie’s life.
When Odysseus leaves Calypso behind by building a raft and setting course for his beloved Ithaca, his old enemy Poseidon soon finds out about this plan. Odysseus is again overcome by misfortune when his raft is sunk by the sea god. This episode of adversity of course corresponds to Cooper’s plunge into a realm of ‘non-existence’ after his enemies sabotage his attempt to cross over into the terrestrial world. Odysseus is saved from a watery grave when the nymph Ido provides him with a cloak that allows him to safely withstand the waves. Similarly, Cooper escapes his demise in the vast primordial ocean with the assistance of Naido (Na-IDO).
Eventually, Odysseus washes up on an island belonging to a people called the Phaeacians. He is found and taken care of by a princess called Nausikaa, just like Cooper is taken under the wing of Janey-E when he ‘washes up’ in Las Vegas (American pop mythology’s go-to place for washing up). After Odysseus is received and feasted by the Phaeacians, he reveals his identity by telling them the story of his travels. Remember how I mentioned Odysseus sailed around the world for a long time between the end of the Trojan war and his period of captivity on Calypso’s island? In the Odyssey, his adventures in these ‘lost years’ are only related at this point in the narrative. Upon learning of his tragic fate, the Phaeacians agree to transport Odysseus home. Similarly, after Cooper is feasted by the ‘Las Vegans’ – something of whose supposed essence appears to be distilled in the brothers Mitchum, a pair crooked casino-owners – they agree to transport him home when they learn of his true nature.
Odysseus’ most famous epithet in Homer’s epic is ‘man of twists and turns’. These twists and turns represent the many strange adventures that befall him during his attempts to get home, and also the many cunning tricks for which he is renowned. Let us return for a moment to Cooper’s shadow self, the doppelganger, who for the past 25 years has been on his own Odyssey towards Twin Peaks. During the doppelganger’s ‘descent’ into the penal underworld of Yankton prison, he is visited by the Blue Rose Task Force. A line of dialogue from this scene clearly reveals his desire to pass himself off as the long-lost Odysseus: ‘I need to be debriefed by you about this work, Gordon. I will tell you the whole story, all its TWISTS AND TURNS, and I was going to do so. I was on my way to present it to you. I was a little bit behind schedule when my car veered over across the road, and I had my accident.’
The story of the Good Dale’s Odyssey will eventually also find its way back to Gordon Cole, by means of the Las Vegas FBI department. Consider the following message from agent Headley, which seems to hint at Christ’s empty grave after his resurrection, and agent Tammy’s prospective task of compiling the apocryphal gospel documenting ‘the unofficial version’: ‘The bed is empty. My team is sending everything to you as we speak. Director Cole, we got it all. The whole story.’
Gordon Cole – and also the Sheriff’s team back in Twin Peaks – represent those who stayed behind in Ithaca and saw it overrun by a despicable multitude of suitors. Their nefarious presence is felt in the criminality, drug-addiction and economic hardship that has unhinged the mountain village and tempted its children, but it’s perhaps most clearly embodied in the doppelganger, the false Odysseus who eventually arrives at the Sheriff’s station to claim Diane as his prize.
Interestingly, Cole’s role seems to correspond somewhat to that of Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, who in the first part of the Odyssey sets out on a fruitless quest to find his father. (Richard is another Telemachus figure, but a much more tragic one.) When Odysseus finally arrives back at Ithaca, he reveals himself to Telemachus first, so that a plan can be devised to dispose of the suitors. Similarly, it is revealed in the final episodes of The Return that Gordon Cole has been for a long time involved in a secret plot to destroy BOB and the doppelganger. During the final showdown in the Sheriff’s Station, Cooper’s shadow self is violently suppressed in a rather ridiculous feat of impossible interdimensional heroics.
As great a hero as Odysseus may be, he has one fatal flaw – the quintessential tragic flaw of Greek storytelling. I’m referring of course to hubris, the rash and arrogant tendency to overplay one’s hand and anger the gods. Not satisfied with disposing of his nemesis, reclaiming his rightful position in the world and rejoining his consort, Cooper sets out on a last impossible mission: to bring home the homecoming queen.
There are quite a few precedents in classical mythology for a descent into the underworld – a perilous journey known as ‘katabasis’. Indeed, Odysseus himself at one point encounters the shades of the dead, but the archetypal pattern for the descent into the belly of the beast is provided by another Greek culture hero called Orpheus. In the Orpheus myth, a great musician enters Hades to retrieve his deceased lover, only to watch her plummet away from him when he looks back during their ascent back into the world.
One of the several rivers of the Greek underworld was called the Lethe – the river of forgetfulness. The mortals whose shades resided in Hades were made to drink from this river, which caused them to forget their life on earth. Twin Peaks’ underworld, a town in Texas called Odessa (the name of the town evokes ‘Odyssey’), also seems drenched in forgetfulness. Cooper is warned by both the Fireman and Jeffries to ‘remember’ his mission and his identity after crossing the symbolic river into this mysterious realm. A failure to do so might doom him to forever wander the underworld as a shade among shades.
But Cooper begins to remember something much more disturbing too. Somehow, during his crossing, he seems to finally reach a deeper understanding of the shadow self he has so valiantly strived to vanquish. One and the same they are – and always have been. ‘I don’t recognize you anymore,’ Diane writes in the farewell letter she leaves next to the bed in their motel room, supposedly surrendering herself fully to her Linda persona. An estranged Penelope thus leaves her Odysseus, who is not and cannot be the same after 25 years of hardships. Cooper’s shadow may have been assimilated during his Odyssey, but this grim triumph has left him a changed man. The nostalgic past to which both the show’s characters and its audience have tried to return – the comfortable starting position we all seem to remember – is revealed to be nothing more than a treacherous dream.
In the Odyssey, one of the oldest stories known to man, the visions that come during our sleep are considered to possess both prophetic and deceitful power. While contemplating a dream about Odysseus’ prospective return, Penelope references an old belief which states that true dreams pass through a gate of polished horn, while false dreams pass through one of ivory. Penelope cannot decide on the origin of her vision, and in the 18 episodes that constitute The Return, this same uncertainty seems to have settled over all of Twin Peaks’ fondly remembered native shores. Its denizens each in their own way find themselves stuck in a nightmarish liminal zone between truth and untruth, fact and possibility. In the words of the late Margaret Lanterman: ‘Watch and listen to the dream of time and space. It all comes out now, flowing like a river. That which is, and is not.’ When Laura Palmer’s memories of what has been irrevocably lost are finally jolted to life by the sight of her parental house, something ends. Is it a dream that implodes? But if so, what of the dreamers living their sad, broken lives inside of it?
Perhaps the only joyful return provided by Twin Peaks’ season three is Dougie's. When this new surrogate Cooper, who is happy to abandon heroism for the simple pleasures of the domestic sphere, shows up on the doorstep of a life that might seem bleak and dreary to a zealous knight-errand, but deeply meaningful to an ageing castaway, he can only utter one single blissful syllable: home.
[EDIT: The man's name is, as some of you have thankfully pointed out, indeed Mark Frost rather than Robert Frost. Time to lay off the Arnott's Mint Slices, I guess. Still, I am happy for this error, because it prompted angiuli's excellent contribution down in the comments.]