This week, I read selections from Homer's Odyssey, translated by Tony Kline. The sections in the assigned reading included Odysseus's adventures with Polyphemus the Cyclops, Circe the witch, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and various other monsters that he encounters on his journey home. The following are my thoughts as I read through each of the excerpts.
Trapped: All I could think while reading this was, "well...this escalated quickly." Odysseus and his men find Polyphemus's cave and want to investigate his nature--if he is a gentle giant or a hostile being (spoiler alert--he is the latter). When Polyphemus discovers them in his lair, Odysseus tries to bargain so that he and his crew can escape with their lives, begging the Cyclops to respect the gods. Polyphemus displays intense hubris here, saying that he does not care for Zeus and that "[Cyclopes] are greater than they [the gods]." He then kills two of Odysseus's men (the gory details of which I will leave out of this blog post), and Odysseus devises an equally violent plan to kill the Cyclops and escape.
The Cyclops Defeated: Odysseus is definitely no fool. It is extremely clever of him to tell Polyphemus that his name is Nobody, so that when the Cyclops cries out to his peers and says that "Nobody is trying to kill him," they think they cannot do anything about his plight. Throughout the Odyssey, Odysseus can be very conceited (like when he tells Polyphemus his real name in the next section and almost loses his ship because of it), but he certainly has the wit to back up his claims for the most part.
Circe's Magic: It is both heartbreaking and extremely frustrating to watch Odysseus lose his men one by one. I was very glad that at least one man, Eurylochus, sensed the trap and did not succumb to Circe's spell. It must be a terrible thing for the men to be changed into pigs but still have all the memories of the human beings that they were before. I am grateful that throughout the story, Odysseus receives the help of various gods like Hermes in this situation.
The rest of this half of the reading seemed very ominous. When Odysseus requests to leave Circe's palace, she does not keep him against his will, but instead gives him the task of going to the underworld, a place where no mortal has ever gone and survived.
(Reading B - Notes from the second half)
Ghosts of Elpenor and Teiresias: In this story, Odysseus visits the underworld and is confronted by the blind but insightful seer Teiresias. The theme here of sight is an important one: although Teiresias cannot physically see the world around him, he can see into other parts of the cosmos and transcend space and time. In this section, he warns Odysseus that he will lose all of his men, but he will survive if he does not succumb to his pride. It is interesting because the reader sees the entire rest of the story foreshadowed in this excerpt.
The Spirit of Anticleia: This section was heartbreaking to read. Odysseus encounters his mother in the underworld, and since he had left so many years ago to fight in the Trojan War, he had not seen her. He receives details of his wife, son, and father in their respective places. Odysseus finds out that Laertes, his father, was in a dark place in his life, grieving at the absence of his son--and this is the affliction that took his mother's life. To read that his mother died of a broken heart waiting for her son was heart-wrenching enough, but when Odysseus tries to embrace her and cannot physically touch the spirit, this was the saddest part for me.
The next three chapters describe Odysseus's conversations with various ghosts in his past. The ghosts of famous women are portrayed, and Odysseus recounts the stories of their lives, how their families came to be, and how they died. Next, Odysseus sees the ghost of Agamemnon, a dear friend from the war, and listens as he tells his friend how he was killed. The spirit of Achilles wants to hear how his family is doing in the world, and the ghost of Ajax walks away from Odysseus in stony silence as he angrily remembers how Odysseus defeated him to win Achilles's weapons. Here, I was impressed by Odysseus's humility, something that the reader does not get to see very often. As he describes how he won the weapons, he shows remorse that he achieved this and concedes that Ajax did not deserve to die because of his victory.
The Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis: It was in this section that I appreciated the loyalty of Odysseus's men. As they row past the Sirens, Odysseus's ears remain unplugged and he begs his men to loosen the ropes that bound him to the mast and to draw nearer to the shore, but they refuse. It was because of this that it was a pity that Scylla "devoured" six of his crew members when they reach the shores of the twin dangers, Scylla and Charybdis. This was an abrupt and gory ending to these excerpts, and I will most likely read the rest of the account later this week.
Bibliography:
Homer's Odyssey, translated by Tony Kline.
Books IX-XII.
Source: Poetry in Translation.
(Reading B - Notes from the second half)
Ghosts of Elpenor and Teiresias: In this story, Odysseus visits the underworld and is confronted by the blind but insightful seer Teiresias. The theme here of sight is an important one: although Teiresias cannot physically see the world around him, he can see into other parts of the cosmos and transcend space and time. In this section, he warns Odysseus that he will lose all of his men, but he will survive if he does not succumb to his pride. It is interesting because the reader sees the entire rest of the story foreshadowed in this excerpt.
The Spirit of Anticleia: This section was heartbreaking to read. Odysseus encounters his mother in the underworld, and since he had left so many years ago to fight in the Trojan War, he had not seen her. He receives details of his wife, son, and father in their respective places. Odysseus finds out that Laertes, his father, was in a dark place in his life, grieving at the absence of his son--and this is the affliction that took his mother's life. To read that his mother died of a broken heart waiting for her son was heart-wrenching enough, but when Odysseus tries to embrace her and cannot physically touch the spirit, this was the saddest part for me.
The next three chapters describe Odysseus's conversations with various ghosts in his past. The ghosts of famous women are portrayed, and Odysseus recounts the stories of their lives, how their families came to be, and how they died. Next, Odysseus sees the ghost of Agamemnon, a dear friend from the war, and listens as he tells his friend how he was killed. The spirit of Achilles wants to hear how his family is doing in the world, and the ghost of Ajax walks away from Odysseus in stony silence as he angrily remembers how Odysseus defeated him to win Achilles's weapons. Here, I was impressed by Odysseus's humility, something that the reader does not get to see very often. As he describes how he won the weapons, he shows remorse that he achieved this and concedes that Ajax did not deserve to die because of his victory.
The Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis: It was in this section that I appreciated the loyalty of Odysseus's men. As they row past the Sirens, Odysseus's ears remain unplugged and he begs his men to loosen the ropes that bound him to the mast and to draw nearer to the shore, but they refuse. It was because of this that it was a pity that Scylla "devoured" six of his crew members when they reach the shores of the twin dangers, Scylla and Charybdis. This was an abrupt and gory ending to these excerpts, and I will most likely read the rest of the account later this week.
Bibliography:
Homer's Odyssey, translated by Tony Kline.
Books IX-XII.
Source: Poetry in Translation.
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