Greetings Kings and Peasants, Sailors and Swineherds!

Round five of the Odyssey, and WOO MY BOY IS BACK IN ITHICA!!!

Finally, after two decades away from his family, where he fought gods, monsters, and his own crew’s stupidity, he can finally relax and take a nap, being done with all the nonsense…right?

Well… I mean he does get to take a nap! But as for the nonsense, there is still one obstacle left to get rid of. And it’s surprisingly not Posiedon, who was last seen throwing a hissy fit at the Phaecians for escorting Odysseus home safely and had been given advice by Zeus to turn their ship into stone and sink it. (Dude what the hell?)

No, the problem remaining for Odysseus is the suitors that are mucking up his house. Which helpfully segways into the two main topics I’d like to talk about this week.

When Odysseus is dropped off in Ithica, Athena casts mist over the city to hide them and goes down and reveals herself to Odysseus, leading to a very fun interaction between the two. It is clear throughout the chapter that the goddess greatly respects the mortal whom she has been helping, but also calls him out on his bullshit and hyper-suspicious nature. And honestly, getting to see Odysseus sit down and strategize with the Goddess of Wisdom to help him retake his home, is just such a cool way to demonstrate his caliber. Anyway, they settle on Odysseus going disguised to stay with his loyal swineherd while Athena calls back Telemechus from Lacedaemon, telling him to get his ass home and go visit the swineherd for, *totally unimportant reasons.* Seems Legit.

The other thing I’d like to mention is the concept of hospitality. See in the world of Ancient Greece, showing hospitality to strangers is maybe the number one most important rule to follow, and breaking hospitality is one of the most dangerous taboos, greater than even crimes like family murder and cannibalism. Zeus, King of the Gods, wasn’t just the god of throwing lightning, and one-night stands but was also the protector and greatest patron of guests. It was believed that Zeus regularly pops down to Earth disguised as a mortal traveler or as a beggar, and if you treated him poorly, he would render divine punishment. This made most people eager to be as good as possible to strangers seeking a roof over their heads.

In fact, in the Odyssey, this is seen many, many times, with both Odysseus and Telemachus being received with feasting, aid, and treasure when they visit various kingdoms. Odysseus in particular was gifted a metric ton of gold and other various treasures from the Phaecians, a whole month, or even a year of feasting on the islands of Aelous and Circe respectively, as well as lodging from the swineherd in Ithica when he is disguised; while Telemachus was provided with lodging and food from Lestor and Menelaus for an extended period of time as well. Telemachus also displays this trait, offering passage to an exile in Chapter 14. The prominence of this idea of treating your guests well, and being willing to offer a helping hand to those in need runs deep throughout the Odyssey, as it did throughout Greek culture as a whole.

And now that we’re over halfway through The Odyssey, let’s talk briefly about some of the craft used, as well as the underlying themes of the story.

When looking at the Odyssey, a story that was created and maintained by centuries of oral tradition, before being codified by Homer in 800 B.C.E, and then (the copy I’m using) was later translated by Samuel Butler in 1900 C.E., one might think that the fact that the story changed hands AT LEAST twice, and constantly had slight tweaks and differences between the tellings, may make it difficult to talk about the actual literary craft used, there is one thing that remains constant throughout all of these tellings, and that’s the use of Epithets.

Epithets are titles used to refer to people or things and are often used in mythology to refer to specific beings, specific versions of the being, or even their specific domain. An example of this is Utgard Loki and Loki, son of Laufey, two different Loki’s in the mythology. Had they been referred to as just ‘Loki’, they would be easily confused, especially as they both appear in the same story, alongside another character named ‘Logi.’ But because of their Epithets denoting them as ‘Loki of the Outlands’ and ‘Loki, Son of Laufey, Blood Brother to Odin,’ they are easily distinguished, and also given significance.

In the Greek Pantheon, this is also the case. Instances of this are calling Hades, ‘the one who receives many guests,’ Poseidon as ‘Earthshaker’; and specifically in The Odyssey; the constant usage of “rosy-fingered Dawn, ‘Jove, the god of hospitality’ or ‘King Jove,’ and numerous other instances of this, ON TOP OF the fact that with a handful of exceptions like Apollo, all of the Gods are referred to by their Roman Epithets (Jove, Neptune, Minerva, etc.) The frequent usage of epithets is a style most commonly found in mythology writings, and as such, it makes perfect sense for it to be here.

As for the themes present in the Odyssey, I touched on it a couple blog posts ago, but would like to elaborate a bit further. To determine the theme of a story, the first, and most obvious place to look, is the characters. In my third blog post, I talked at length about how most Greek Heroes have a fatal flaw, a character trait that causes them great pain, and often leads to their death. In Odysseus’s case, hubris is his fatal flaw, and by extension, the big idea of The Odyssey is Pride.

Throughout his voyage, the one, constant cause of conflict for him, was his pride. It was because of his pride that led to the sacking of the city of Ismarus after departing from Troy, losing the favor of Athena. It was his pride that led him to taunt Polyphemus after having escaped from his clutches, causing the Cyclops to send Poseidon after him, seeking revenge. Because of his pride, he lost the lives of his crew and was stranded for a decade on Calypso’s island.

And when he finally does get home and has to face the suitors who were ruining his estate, he is only able to prevail by putting aside his pride, disguising himself as a beggar, staying at the swineherd’s house, and trusting Athena to help him.

All of this paints the underlying message, that it is necessary to restrain one’s pride, lest they be the one to be slain.

And that just about wraps it up for this week’s blog post! Let me just quick update the counter, one second…

…and alright, there we go! If you stuck around the whole time, put a fried egg emoji at the start of your comment, to show that you are an awesome person(you can copy/paste this one:🍳)!

Cheers,

-MJ

Greetings Ladies and Laestrygonians, Gentlemen and Gorgons, Enbys and Entities alike!

So, round four of The Odyssey, and one thing I’m noticing is that the pacing is kind of strange. The epic starts off rather slow with Telemachus’s drama, before eventually transitioning to Odysseus’s POV in Chapter Five. From there we get Odysseus’s badass solo voyage until he washes up on the Phaecians’ shore, and then it’s just three more chapters of characters just talking. And then suddenly, in the span of four chapters, from Chapter Nine to Chapter Twelve, we get his entire voyage. Just like that.

In fact, most of his voyage is covered in just three chapters, IX, X, and XII (Chapter XI is pretty much just a cameo chapter, with very little plot-relevant stuff happening.) Everything from the lair of the Cyclops to Circe, to Charybdis and Scylla, and being stranded on Calypso’s island. When people talk about The Odyssey, odds are, they’re talking about something that happened in one of these three chapters.

“Hey remember when Odysseus outsmarted the Goddess Circe?”

Yeah, in Chapter Ten.

“Oooh, I remember there being a really scary sky monster and a sea monster that caused whirlpools that Odysseus had to sail past!”

Do you mean Scylla and Charybdis? Yeah, that was Chapter Twelve.

“Well he went to the Underworld and–”

Chapter Eleven, NEXT!

And honestly, there’s not even that much in those chapters to comment on. I mean, I could talk about how Odysseus cheats on Penelope and has sex with Circe, or how Eurolycus kind of had a point when he defied Odysseus and the Prophet’s warnings against harming the sun cattle, instead of choosing to let the crew starve. Or how despite wanting desperately do get home and reunite with his wife and child, he chooses to stay and dick around on Circe’s island for an entire year. Or how the gods of Olympus can’t for the life of them stop meddling in human affairs…actually you know what that’s a good idea, lemme just jot that down! (scribbles in notebook) Ok, that’s a topic for another day, but there’s actually something else that caught my eye, that I want to talk about.

So Chapter Ten begins with Odysseus and his crew rocking up on the island of Aeloi and he talks to the mortal king Aeolus. And if you are anything like me, or have read the Percy Jackson books, you might be confused as hell why Aeolus is described as just a mortal king, especially given that the book describes the island as a ‘floating island.’ I mean, Aeolus is the god of the winds, the supreme ruler of the four directions, right?

Well after like half an hour of digging, I found something interesting. So as far as I can work out, Aeolus appears in three main Greek texts, The Argonautica, the story of Jason of Argos, and his quest to recover the Golden Fleece; The Aeneid, the story of Aeneas escaping Troy after the Trojan War and his subsequent founding of Rome; and, you guessed it, The Odyssey. In all three stories, Aeous, at the behest of either Gods or Heroes, sends helpful winds or contains harmful ones, to assist the various protagonists at some point in the story. In all three, he seems to be portrayed as just a mortal king that Zeus gave control of the winds. As for his floating island, turns out, that a floating island in this case simply refers to an island that doesn’t touch the bottom of the sea, and just kinda floats around. It’s not like there isn’t precedent for that interpretation either, as another mythological instance of this kind of island is Delos, the birthplace of the twins Artemis and Apollo.

So why am I bringing this up? Well, here’s the thing. It’s a commonly held notion that Greek Mythology, and by extension, all mythology, is a collection of stories that were written down that recount the same stories that were told back in the day. And that is true to an extent, but it’s more complicated than that. See the mythology we have access to today isn’t just a collection of stories that everyone in Greece thought were true. It was a living religion, built on generations of stories that were passed down from storyteller to storyteller. The Odyssey itself, while being written down by Homer around 800 B.C.E., was a story that was passed down through centuries of oral tradition, and lived on in the memories of those who heard it. These people worshipped these gods, because to them, they were more than just characters, they were seen as beings that existed above our world, and their belief was just as strong as that held by modern-day religions. And even the Hellenistic deities we consider as the Greek Pantheon weren’t the first set of deities there. Researchers have found traces of a pre-Hellenistic pantheon of gods from Mycenaean Greece, which can be thought of as the Ancient Greece, of Ancient Greece. Those stories are largely lost to us, as we can’t read their old language, so all we have to go on are the stories that eventually underwent a metamorphosis into their semi-modern day versions. And not all of the deities came from Greece. There’s evidence suggesting that notable figures in the pantheon were actually imported from other places, such as Dionysus, the twins Artemis and Apollo, and Aphrodite, to name a few.

And that’s not even to mention the fact that the details of a story change with every telling, and every translation. These aren’t just stories that some writers sat down and thought about, The Odyssey is one of the hundreds of stories that are built upon generations of storytellers, beliefs, and real people. Things are fluid, and details always change, leaving our understanding of them fuzzy. And if you think that isn’t true about whatever religion you happen to follow, let me just remind you that there’s a version of the Bible where Jesus Christ fights a dragon. I’m just going to let you sit with that one. (Also, the fact that there is seven different churches in our small town of Grantsburg, all preaching slightly different interpretations of the same Book.)

So, what’s the moral of the story? Uhh, I don’t know, things are more complicated then they seem, pasta is delicious, and don’t be that person who goes ‘eRmm aCtualLy I heArD ThiS stoRY aND I deCidEd iT GoEs tHis WaY!’ Because nobody cares, and you’re making yourself look like a jackass. Just let the stories be stories, and enjoy them.

Well, this was a tad longer than my other ones, but I did promise nerd dumping in this series, so there you go I guess. 😂

If managed to stick all the way to the end, put a pasta emoji at the start of your comment to prove that you are an awesome person! (You can just copy and paste this one: 🍝)

Cheers!

-MJ

(Also, lemme just tick up the counter here, don’t mind me!)

Greetings, Greeks and Geeks, Heros and Godlings alike!

Third Week of posting, and things are finally kicking into gear! Buckle up, because in this section, we finally get to start learning what kind of person Odysseus really is, beyond his badassness, and that, is a prideful person.

Also, before I continue, as I established last time, Odysseus is a Grade-A Badass, and if I were to gush about every time he does something cool, we’d be here too long. So I’m just going to throw up a little counter every week of moments of Badass-ery up to the point of the post:

Alright, Good? Good! Onto section three!

So books seven through nine delve more into our boy Odysseus, and what makes him tick. We get moments that show him as something more nuanced then the legendary hero that Kings have spoken about with reverence. We get to see more into his head, what drives him, his morals, and most notably, his flaws.

See, in Greek Mythology, every hero has something known as a fatal flaw, their primary weak spot that winds up making their lives a lot harder, and in most cases, getting them outright killed. Examples of these flaws are Heracules’s wrath leading him to outride murder people; Psyche’s lack of self-confidence causing her to ignore the warnings of the gods; or me, and my inability to stick to a consistent sleep schedule, leaving me in a state of energy limbo, with full energy in the mornings, before crashing halfway through the day, resulting in low energy during critical classes like statistics and English, and getting in quick half naps, meaning that I have too much energy going into the evening to fall asleep at a reasonable time, resulting in a vicious cycle that causes a detrimental effect on my mental and physical health, but society has conditioned me to just endure the suffering because people assigned male at birth are just told to suck it up and deal with it, without regard for the impact that has on someone’s ability to ask for help and express their emotions, leading them to bottle them up until they inevitably surface in an incredibly long run-on sentence in a blog post about greek heroes that has been going on for about an entire paragraph, and just got weirdly self-aware to the point of it being awkward and a grammatical nightmare, so now there’s no way to smoothly bring it to a close.

Y’know, the standard character writing flaws.

Odysseus is no different in this sense, and like so many Greek Heroes before him, his fatal flaw is his hubris, or in layman’s terms, his excessive pride.

We see hints of this when a random athlete makes a soft jab at Odysseus refusing to compete in events, leading to him angrily retorting, before showing up the man and breaking the disc throwing record, a relatively tame scene, but it shows a bit more what’s going on underneath the surface.

His hubris is really shown to be a bit of a problem when his crew sets off from Troy, and after a few minor pitstops, arrives on the Isle of the Cyclops. If you’re familiar with this story, then you know what’s about to happen, otherwise, here’s the abbreviated version:

In search of more food, Odysseus leads part of his crew into the cave of the cyclops, Polyphemus, to try and steal his flock of sheep for rations. They get caught in the act, and Polyphemus seals them in the cave with a giant boulder and proceeds to slowly eat the crew. To escape, Odysseus first introduces himself as Noman, proceeds to get the Cyclops passed out drunk, and then with the help of the remainder of his crew, stabs out Polyphemus’s eye, blinding him.

When Polyphemus’s Cyclops buddies hear him scream in pain and ask him who hurt him, all he can say is that, “No-man attacked me!” So they ignore him, and when he goes to let his flock out, Odysseus and his remaining crew hide under the sheep to escape, before driving them to the ship. They were home free, but this is where Odysseus’ hubris kicks in.

Mr. Wise Guy starts taunting Polyphemus, telling him that he should have known better than to challenge a man as smart as him, and that if anyone asks he should tell them that: King Odysseus of Ithica blinded him, (once more for the people in the back) KING ODYSSEUS OF ITHICA WAS THE ONE TO BLIND HIM!

This, shockingly, turned out to be a bad move, as it not only almost got him two massive boulders chucked at him and his ship, nearly killing them all there, but more importantly, it turns out that Polyphemus’s daddy is none other than Poseidon, the supreme ruler and god of the sea. Polyphemus prayed to Poseidon to avenge him, and now it makes a lot more sense why Poseidon tried to kill him last section. Spoiler, that isn’t the last time he tries.

The point being, if Odysseus, self-proclaimed smart guy, had just kept his trap shut, he would have had a nice short two-week cruise home, reunited with his wife and son, and would have avoided the entire rest of the story, only losing a handful of his crew, instead of— well, let’s just say there’s a reason that Odysseus was lost at sea for nine years…

See you back next week, or not, I guess, for another round of Deep Thoughts with Me™!

If you made it all the way through, put a coconut emoji (🥥) in the comments below. (You can just copy-paste mine if you want!)

Cheers!

-MJ

Greetings demons and demigods, shapeshifters, and androids! Second week, second blog post, 25k out of 130k words so far, now isn’t that just so EXCITING? (Deranged laughter fades into the distance)

Sorry ’bout that, let’s hold off the work-induced insanity at bay for just a little longer, shall we?

(Trick question, I’m already batsh1t crazy, and if you haven’t noticed that already, I really can’t help you)

To do that, I would llike to indulge in an info-dump rant, care to join me down that rabbit hole? Ha, not like you can say no because odds are, you’re here because you’re my second-week Comment Collaborator, and you have no choice! Don’t worry, I promise I got something cool to talk about, so let’s get into it!

The primary topic I would like to discuss in this week’s post is how The Odyssey masterfully introduces its titular character. See, unlike most books, The Odyssey does not, in fact, start at the beginning of the story, but rather, the middle! And it doesn’t actually introduce Odysseus until the fifth section, nearly 20k words in! And they make the most of the time they have to build up the hype around this legendary warrior who fought and schemed against the Trojans during the nine-year war. From the very beginning, it is made clear that people respect Odysseus to an incredible degree.

By all accounts, he was a good king, ruling his people benevolently to the point where he was viewed as acting almost like a father to his people. The suitors fear him, they certainly wouldn’t be pulling the crap that they were up to if Odysseus was home. In Chapters III and IV Nestus and Menelaus, both powerful and wealthy kings, speak highly of him, as does Nestus’s son, and Helen of Troy. During Telemachus’s meal with Menelaus, Helen recounts stories of Odysseus’s exploits at Troy, from infiltrating the city to gather intelligence, to single-handedly being the reason that the Greeks weren’t caught during the Trojan Horse incident.

And his support isn’t just shown by mortals but from the heavens. Athena, who is noted to rarely pick favorites among mortals, has a fondness for Odysseus and respects him. The fact that the goddess of wisdom and warcraft respects a mere mortal goes a long way toward showing the kind of person this story follows.

And then there’s the opening narration that hints at Odysseus’s struggles, and how he slew the Cyclops Polyphemus and had survived all nature of monsters. By the team he actually appears for the first time, there is a huge cloud of hype built around this single man, a hero for the ages, a brave warrior, a master strategist, and a survivor. Surely, there’s no way the man could live up the legend…right?

WRONG! This guy is onscreen for all of two pages before he builds a raft that could put small ships to shame, singlehandedly; and engages on a twenty-day voyage over the ocean, not once sleeping or even taking his eyes off of his destination. And when Poseidon, the god of the ocean itself notices him and gets pissed enough to send a tropical storm his way, smashing his raft into shambles, what does this guy do? This motherfucker gets on a broken piece of timber like he was riding a horse, strips naked, and dives right the fuck back into the sea, swimming for the next two days straight until he reaches land. And even then the waves batter him into the rocks and rip him back out to sea, but this absolute unit just keeps going, eventually making it on land. How fucking metal is that?

This is a masterful example of how to introduce a badass. The dude just comes in and shows why this is HIS book. This is hands down, the best introduction to a character I have seen in a long time. Phenomenal.

Anyway, that concludes my TedTalk on this badass, see you next week.

If you actually stuck around and read the entire thing, put a croissant emoji (🥐) in your comment to prove it!

Byeeeeeeeee!

-MJ

Greetings humans and fellow robots! I have begun reading Homer’s The Odyssey, and oh boy, did I underestimate how quickly the epic was going to start. But first, I feel like I should make it so you know what happened in the book so far. Here you go: https://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html

What? I’m not going to summarize it for you, you’re a big kid, go read it yourself if you’re interested!

That’s not to say I have nothing to say about the book so far, quite the opposite actually! Buckle up, because if you’re here reading this, odds are you’re being forced to, so you might as well just get yourself a bowl of popcorn and a drink, because we’re going to be here a while!

First of all, I want to talk about the framing of the story and its overall structure, because it’s pretty interesting. For those who aren’t aware, The Odyssey recounts the story of King Odysseus of Ithica’s voyage home after spending 10 years fighting with the Greeks at Troy. So naturally, you’d expect the story to start with Odysseus setting sail from Troy, right? Or maybe with him already at sea, or even during his stunt with the Trojan Horse? NOPE! Instead, we start off in Mount Olympus, home of the gods, as they discuss the fate of Odysseus before Athena decides it’s about time to start playing favorites again. The story then shifts to the perspective of Prince Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, and his struggles since his dad is missing, mainly the power-hungry, horny, and drunk suitors who are clamoring to marry his mother, and Odysseus’ wife, Queen Penelope. Athena is the inciting incident for Telemachus to start searching for Odysseus, and kicks off the thematic thread of the gods meddling with the affairs of humans, for their own whims.

But what really makes this framing device interesting, is that at the very start of the epic, we are told some key events of Odysseus’s story, including his run-in with the cyclops Polyphemus, the cattle of the sun god, and his time on Calypso’s Island, before they happened, informing us that his entire crew is going to die and that after twenty years, Odysseus will make it home to Ithica. This sets up the story in a way reminiscent of a Shakespearean tragedy. The ending is known to some degree from the start, so the focus of the story shifts from being ‘Will Odysseus make it back to Ithica?’ to ‘HOW will Odysseus make it back to Ithica?’ This is a far more interesting question because in most stories, the hero ends up prevailing (Although funnily enough this is only partially the case in classic Greek Myths, usually the hero in question does win, but then their fatal flaw, often hubris or wrath, ends up getting them killed in the stupidest way possible. Just ask Theseus, dude got glued to a chair in the Underworld for trying to steal Hades’ wife. Oh, and Theseus also kidnapped Helen of Troy before it was cool, so there’s that too.)

Also, I ran headfirst into a snag when beginning to read this story. So The Odyssey is a Greek Epic, however, after being recorded on paper, and then translated, the story refers to many of the figures by their Roman names, namely Athena, who is referred to as Minerva; Zeus, who is referred to as Jove; and, oh, I don’t know, THE FREAKING MAIN CHARACTER! Seriously, why did they change Odysseus’s name to Ulysses, it’s not like that’s any easier to spell, and now the title doesn’t match with the character, seriously, what the Hades? Oh, but they kept SOME of the names the same, so like, what was the point of changing the others in the first place???

To make matters simpler, I shall be referring to all of the Characters by their Greek Names, whenever they’re brought up, to make matters easier.

Apart from the different names, the word choices are very clearly from another time, so it’s a bit tricky to fully follow the nuances of the dialogue, especially since dialogue works differently here than in Modern writing. Instead of breaking up the dialogue with the characters emoting or reacting to what someone just said (ex. “She seemed startled, before saying…”, or “he said thoughtfully”). Instead, each character monologues for a paragraph, and then the other person monologues for a paragraph, and so on and so forth. It definitely is a different style and serves to tell this grandiose story, but it makes it harder to read.

Anyway, that’s enough of me nerd dumping on you for one day, I got lots to read, and lots to analyze, so it’s going to be an interesting ride! If you actually stuck around and read the entire thing, put a pickle emoji (🥒) in your comment to prove it!

Drink some water, Cheers!

-MJ

When it comes to different stories across the world and history, nothing tickles my brain quite like Greek Mythology. One of my first book obsessions was the Percy Jackson series written by Rick Riordan back in middle school, and ever since, Greek Myths have been a very fun pastime of mine to explore. Of the many tales from the Ancient Mediteranium is the story of the Trojan War, as written in the Epic Cycle, a collection of Ancient Greek poems, compiled after many centuries of oral tradition surrounding the stories, before eventually being transcribed to writing. The specific entry I am going to be reading is Homer’s The Odyssey (Specifically the translation by Samuel Butler), the story of the Greek King Odysseus sailing home to his family after ten long years at war with the city of Troy. Throughout the story, he encounters monsters, gods, and sorceresses, all of which attempt to bar his way home.

(The Album Covers of the first four sagas of the ongoing EPIC Musical; an adaptation of The Odyssey; Troy, Cyclops, Ocean, and Circe.)

I am extremely excited to embark on this Odyssey of my own, pardon the pun, through this long tale from over two millennia ago. And the age of the text is what I foresee being the trickiest aspect to this endeavor. First of all, it is not the work of a single author, but centuries of storytellers recounting this tail, before it was transcribed by Homer in 800 B.C. in his native language of Ancient Greek, which then underwent two millennia of interpretation and translations, all of which shift the meaning in such a way that the story undoubtedly has shifted from its original roots. I am sure that I will be able to keep up with the task of reading it, in fact it would be a treat, not a task; my biggest struggle will likely be pacing myself to the 7 post schedule.

Speaking of the reading schedule, I will be reading from the version on the Internet Classics Archive, and shall break the text into 3-4 book sections per week. Stick around to watch me nerd out and overanalyze this legendary tale each week!

-MJ