A big piece of culture. A few big questions.

You probably haven't read the Iliad or the Odyssey. Don't panic — most adults haven't either. But scholars, poets, and directors have been fighting about them for over two thousand years: which of Homer's two epics is greater? And here's the strange part — every time someone answers, they're quietly answering another question: who am I?

Quick recap:

The Iliad — the tenth year of the Trojan War. A hero named Achilles is told by the gods that he has two futures: stay home, live long, be forgotten; or fight, die young, be remembered forever. He picks the second. The whole poem is about a group of people trying to find meaning in the middle of violence and glory.

The Odyssey — ten years after the war ends. Another hero, Odysseus, is trying to get home. On the way: a one-eyed giant, a goddess, sirens, sea monsters, ghosts from the underworld. It takes him ten years. The whole poem is about a man who's been away from his family for twenty years — and whether he even recognizes his own home, his own wife, his own son, his own self anymore.

Put it another way: The Iliad is about leaving. The Odyssey is about coming home.

Big question #1: Which is harder — leaving, or coming home?

For centuries, schools mostly taught the Iliad. In the 18th century a British scholar named Bentley said an ugly line: "The Iliad is for men. The Odyssey is for the other sex." Underneath: the war poem is "serious," the homecoming is "just fun."

You've probably met that split — in your classroom, at home, in your own head. When something looks "too fun," do you quietly assume it doesn't count?

Big question #2: Who decides what is "worth taking seriously"?

The Odyssey isn't actually light. Out of 24 books, only 4 are the famous monster adventures. The other 20 are about coming home — how he goes back, how his own family doesn't recognize him, how he sneaks around his own house disguised as a beggar to see who his wife and son and servants have become. It is a poem about identity.

Try to picture it: you've been away twenty years. You don't know if your family still remembers you. You walk up to your own door. Do you knock and yell "I'm home"? Or, like Odysseus, do you stand outside and watch first? What exactly are you afraid of?

There is a wonderful scene. Odysseus is trapped in the cave of a one-eyed giant. The giant asks his name. He answers: "My name is Nobody." (In Greek, outis.) Then he blinds the giant. The giant screams to the other giants: "Nobody has hurt me!" They think he's fine. They go home.

It's a pun. But think again. Odysseus has been missing for twenty years. Everyone thinks he's dead. He's drifting on the sea with nothing. Is he really a Nobody?

Big question #3: What actually makes you you? Your name? What you have done? Whether anyone still remembers you?

Near the end, the goddess Calypso wants to keep him. She offers immortality — young and beautiful and undying, forever, by her side. He turns her down. He chooses to go back to a wife who has aged, to a kingdom that may be in ruins.

Big question #4: If you had to pick — a perfect immortal life with a goddess, or your real, imperfect, aging family — which would you pick? And be honest about why.

The person who wrote the Bloomberg piece I'm summarizing, Daniel Mendelsohn, translated the Odyssey himself. He tells two true stories. His 81-year-old father sat in on Mendelsohn's Odyssey seminar for a whole semester — and still hated it: "I lived through the war. The Iliad is what makes sense to me." Another older friend, an editor, read the Odyssey and complained: "Why doesn't he just go home already?"

Mendelsohn is quietly saying: which epic you prefer isn't really about "literary taste." It's about what kind of person you are. People who lived through war love the war book. People who long for adventure love the wandering. People who long for home love the homecoming.

We're not telling you the answer. The hardest questions we leave with you.