Understanding SWIM Through the Lens of The Odyssey: Odysseus, Penelope and the Long Journey Home 🏊‍♂️

There are a lot of ways BTS's SWIM can be interpreted, but it still has a defined overarching meaning. The central idea draws from these lines by Rainer M. Rilke that RM shared in his letter* before the release - "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final"**. The song gradually walks you through its meaning.

When I found out that the model ship used in the SWIM video is named 'Ulysses' (Latin for Odysseus), I went back and reread the Odyssey. I noticed several thematic parallels, specially with SWIM, but also across all the songs on ARIRANG. I thought about doing separate analyses for the lyrics, the parallels and the MV. But I think bringing all these elements together actually helps map its ambiguity.

With this analysis, I don't intend to solve the song. Rather, I simply want to place these elements side by side to allow them to interact with each other and draw out the interpretation.

🧵 This is going to be a really long thread and a bit heavy, but this is the only way I can come up with to try and explain it.
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Notes:
1. *RM's letter: weverse.io/bts/fanpost/2-…
2. **From the poem 'Go to the Limits of Your Longing' by Rainer Maria Rilke.

(1/54) Why approach the interpretation of the song this way?

The album seems to resonate between three expansive frameworks:
🔴 The Odyssey, which is complex and accumulative;
🔴 BTS's own journey, which is complex and accumulative;
🔴 and the folk song Arirang, which is also complex and accumulative.

They sort of bounce off each other and pinning down the meaning without flattening it is really difficult. With SWIM, preserving its ambiguity is not just a stylistic choice. It helps retain its layered meaning.
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Notes:
The musical Ari Arari - musicalsofkorea.com/k-musicals-in-…

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