Part 3

Everytime I've read the poem or seen one of the movies I always look forward to the scene where Odysseus strings the bow. There's such a build in that moment. All of this time and it leads up to a simple physical action, demonstrating his superior strength and grace. Of all the weapons it's a bow. It seems like a unique choice, a weapon specific to Odysseus, that you don't see him use once in the entire poem. There's also the just absolute awe and then mayhem that occurs after. He's a force of nature through the entire poem. He leaves a wake everywhere he goes. He's so powerful that he is the focus of the greek world as well as the world of the gods. There's also the beauty of the question of the bed. The suggestion of an immovable union between the two of them. And the organic association with their love. Fate plays a huge role in the poem, and Penelope and Odysseus are described as not just perfect together but meant for each other. It's sort of like the original tough love couple.

Part 2

There's so many arguments when Odysseus is first introduced. There's the first one between Athena and Zeus, in which Zeus is confused by Athena's sudden desire to see Odysseus's suffering end since she was the source of it. I guess it demonstrates Athena's affection towards him. Then there's the arugment between Hermes and Circe. There's so much information in that argument. There's the topic of male security and insecurities, the fear of women power, and the question of whether or not the gods are superior or if it's just their super natural powers that make them so. They're personalities she argues are not superior, which means that mentally they're equivalent to if not at times inferior to men. There's many times in the poem where men are challenged by women for a number of reasons but this was definitely one of the more complicated arguments. Then there's the discussion between Circe and Odysseus where he's confused about his freedom. I wonder about what kind of woman would want a man who cries about another woman all day. Odysseus's choice to stay mortal touches on what Circe and Hermes were discussing. In that moment he asserts that mortality is better than immortality. And all of his suffering begins. It begs the question of if he would be as famous if he were a god and not traveled all that way or if he is more famous as a mortal. Maybe it would be the same.

The Odyssey Part 1

There's so much going on in this poem that I'm going to discuss key moments that come to mind. Telemakhos could've been less of a wuss. I know that he's supposedly insecure because he never had a father figure and so he's tormented by these suitors. But he could've gone the other way and in his hatred and resentment of these men worked hard to assert himself. So obviously Homer wanted the sort of coming of age story to exist within the poem. There's a question as to why though. If Odysseus is going to return than it isn't necessary for Telemakhos to find himself before he returns. I know that the situation in Ithaca is supposedly dire, but it isn't such an emergency that anything serious happens before Odysseus returns. It's true that Telemakhos's life is discussed as being in danger but I just wonder about Homer's motivations. The poem is so complicated, I wonder if it would take away from it to simplify it, since a great deal of the information is only apparent upon inspection and at the time it was spoken that was almost impossible. The moments with the birds as symbols is almost irrelevant at this point in time. Maybe in Homer's time it really meant something to his audience to have those moments but they're basically footnotes to us. The meanings behind those animals are lost because of the Judo-Christian traditions that are so common to us now. Telemakhos was really most of the focus for the opening the suspense of that is always sort of fun.

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen have such a similar style of writing that I get confused between them pretty often. I really liked Bronte's story telling approach though. It's maybe a little more sophisticated than Austen's. The backstory of Jane's childhood was so crucial to who she was as a character, and Austen tends to just summarize.  The moment with Helen when Jane is angry and confused as to why Helen didn't defend herself shows an intelligence uncommon for girls their age to possess. It almost makes the rest of the novel confusing, because that sort of sense of justice and higher level thinking doesn't prevail in a lot of situations. I wasn't convinced that Rochester was such a good choice for her either. He's so messed up and suspicious, and strange. Jane seems worth more than that, and I think she lets her inferior status get in the way of that. Women always seem to be in their own way in these novels. It kind of makes one realize that authors don't see women in the best light. If we're too virtuos we're godlike prudes, and if we're too sexual we're whores. If we're too smart our logic prevents us from seeing the truth or acting quickly, and if we're stupid we're just stupid. It's a little frustrating. The happy marriage ending was sort of uninteresting because I thought Bronte didn't make a strong enough argument that Rochester isn't a schmuck.

Part2

So I'm going to lump all the women into one, because I think that they sort of played off of each other through the play. Walcott definitely decided that each woman would represent a different type of female archetype. Circe was that image of a femme fatale, I thought. Sort of that Bond girl who tries to kill you before having sex with you. I'm not sure the appeal but I believe that it's there. There's also a guess a lesbian undertone, in that she's a woman living on an island of women who worship her who hate men. So getting to sleep with the queen of female power would be a moment of extreme male domination. Penelope was had this trait as well. But she was more the tamed tough girl. Kind of like a gangster's wife. The kind of woman who could kill you if she needed to but loved you too much to want to ever do it. There was also a lot of sass that tends to be associated with black female culture. A specific type of playful challenge that she gives to all the men around her. If she wasn't so strong I would call her a tease. It's more like a pride that usurps modesty. The women are just as strong as the men in this play, moving as major personalities. Penelope definitely isn't the type of woman to stand behind her husband in company like the Penelope in the poem. She's definitely the type of woman who stands beside her husband.

Walcott's The Odyssey Part 1

I decided to split this post into two because I wanted to talk about the play in terms of the men versus the women, specifically Billy Blue and Odysseus first and then a briefer post on the women.

Billy Blue was one of my favorite characters out of all the books I read this year. He's a perfect mix between a very personalized and stylized character and an example of literary traditions. The images he describes had so much personality to them. You sort of felt like you were seeing the environment through an islander's eyes. Or at least someone who loved the location. He had a very jazz musician vibe, rhythmic, cultural, story teller. I already wrote a paper on what he says, so I'm not going into it, but he gets a lot of the great lines in the play. In Shakespeare's plays I always love the fools, like Puck is my favorite character in a Midsummer's Night Dream. Billy Blue is definitely a sort of fool-like character. Joking and perceptive he's an insider and an outsider at the same time, moving throughout the story as he pleases.

Odysseus is more flawed in Walcott's play, but to a certain extent he's also more realistic. Maybe he's not more realistic but he seems like a more common depiction or a soldier's personality. War supposedly makes men more ruthless more self centered. Which makes sense, so when Walcott immediately introduces his Odysseus as a harder more common man, and less of a super hero I can feel unoffended by it. Odysseus is definitely less of THE MAN in this play and I liked that because I've read the Odyssey four times now, and it was kind of cool to see a new side of him. The scene of the Cyclops was also really cool. It's really an archetype of the poem so I can see why Walcott chose this to be his moment of political comment. It was a little abrupt maybe, but I think it was so interesting that it sort of drew you in.

Wide Sargasso Sea

This post is going to be brief, because I didn't finish the novel, and I really disliked it. So this was like a prequel to Jane Eyre, but it was written after the novel. Not exactly my favorite method of writing. It tends to feel like an author is riding someone else's curtails, especially someone as famous as Charlotte Bronte. Wide Sargasso Sea seemed more of a soap opera or a melodrama than Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was shocking, but the way the situation was a little less evil twin that Rhys's version. Rochester was a lot more evil in this novel as well. He's a racist, he's inconstant, he's lustful, etc. There isn't a lot to admire. And Antoinette has such a sad story with her brother's death and her mother's madness. It's almost strange that Rochester's first reaction is to fear Antoinette instead of pitying her. He has her money already, there isn't a huge downside. There was a certain element similar to Frankenstein's monster with how Bertha or Antoinette didn't have her own sort of voice on the situation. This novel gives her that voice, but if Bronte didn't think it was necessary than I'm going to argue that it wasn't. It's Bronte's character she has the right to decide Bertha's fate. Maybe it's an irrelevant point but it kind of ruined the novel for me.