The title "forgotten oar" refers to two places in the Odyssey which tell about the hero--Odysseus, or Ulysses, as the Romans called him. In book eleven, Odysseus visits the underworld and talks to a prophet, Tiresias. The prophet tells him that he will have to make a pilgrimage. He has to take one of the oars from his ship and walk with it inland, away from the sea, until he comes to a country where the people know nothing about Greece, the Trojan War, sailing, and oars. When he reaches a place so remote, he will leave the oar and give an offering to Poseidon, the god of the sea. Then Odysseus will be free to return home. So that he can be sure he has walked far enough, he is given a sign: someone in the country will ask him where he's going with that winnowing fan? A winnowing fan is a kind of light shovel that is used to clean a harvest of grain or corn.
I've seen people winnowing corn in Eritrea. Corn (maize) that had been picked and dried was shucked of its leafy covering. The cobs are thrown in a hopper and passed between rollers with rough surfaces that break off the dry kernels. The empty cobs go one way and the kernels of corn another. But the kernels are mixed with pieces of corn silk, bits of leaves, and plant dust. To clean the corn the people throw shovelfuls of grain high in the air. The wind creates a cloud of dust, fragments, and kernels. The kernals are heavy and fall on tarpaulins spread over the winnowing field, while the dust, silk, and leaves are blown away. So Odysseus was going to reach a place where people didn't know an oar from a shovel, didn't know anything about ships and sailing, didn't know anything about him, his country, or anyone he knows. It's really the end of the road. At this point Odysseus thanks Poseidon that his journey is done, he can go back to his family, and live with the promise of a gentle death.
I heard this story when I was a student in the Classics Department at Vanderbilt. Like several metaphors in Homer, this one stuck in my mind. It was such a compelling picture of what it means to see things from a different point of view, an account of someone who can get beyond their customary way seeing things, without having to die or go into some kind of trance. Odysseus goes the whole way himself, awake and on purpose, but he gets to a place where he is nothing, less than nothing--the people don't know anything about ships and the sea--about Odysseus, his civilization, Greek commerce, etc. etc.
I didn't notice it then, but the story even includes a sign, a visible token to tell Odysseus that he's reached the end; he doesn't have to "take it on faith" or "rely on his intution," or whatever, to know that he's there. This detail adds something objective that's often missing from accounts of what it means to search your soul and to find yourself.
So that's why "forgotten oar" has been a phrase in my mind.