First glimpse of Odysseus in The Odyssey - not till part 5

Surprisingly, Odysseus does not appear in The Odyssey until the 5th (of 24) sections, at which point we find him not in heroic mode but in despair: he's sitting on the beach, mournfully looking at the horizon and dreaming of home. He at last tells Calypso that she has to release him - though she's more beautiful and alluring and of course eternal as a goddess than his wife, Penelope, he wants to go back to P. - this element of The Odyssey is like about a thousand teenage love songs - and she agrees at last to let him go. She brings him to a forest on her island, gives him the tools, tells him to make a boat, which she will provision. Well, I'd be stuck right there, but O of course knows how to build a boat from 20 felled trees, though fearful of undertaking the voyage alone, he heads off to sea. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, so to speak, the suitors for P. have now learned that Telemachus has sailed off to try to learn of his father's fate and they plot to lay in wait for him on his return, ambush him, and kill him. So the forces of the epic poem are truly converging on Ithaca, as both T. and O. are heading there, with trouble awaiting. Again, I am struck by how deft and complex this narrative structure turns out to be - we are entering the story near the end, and the most famous part of the narrative, the voyage of Odysseus, comes much later - presumably, if my memory serves, a narrative that O relates to others on his return to Ithaca. Also, as noted previously, I am struck by how much of The Oddyssey is a coming-of-age story - Telemachus becoming a man, preparing for the return of his father, protecting his mother and the family legacy.