GA blogs an essay: I Fucking Hate Homer

[Golden Applesauce]

I was going to put this in Bring and Brag, but I figured that since I wouldn't be posting any actual essay but rather ranting about how much Homer annoys me, I'll put it here instead.  I'm writing this because I think it will somehow help me write this stupid essay, possibly via public shame or making me organize my thoughts.

The Setting: GA, despite being reasonably competent at writing in general, sucks at writing graded essays for humanities teachers.  He is also taking a required 300-level English course concerning various epics (The Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Ramayana) which normally he would enjoy (mythology and latin spags, unite!) except that this semester he trying to get into MIT or Stanford or equivalent to study mathematics, and his GPA is already at 3.1 and can't take much more punishment.  And as mentioned he sucks at writing English essays.

The Antagonist: A measly four-page essay about The Odyssey, due in ~9 hours, which would normally be no big deal except that I am coming up seriously blank on the prompt, which is: either a) discuss Homer's methods and tricks of creating character re: a character introduced in the last 16 books (i.e., the last 2/3 of the story) or b) identify the narrative strategies used by Homer to keep the audience interested and also make the audience pause and consider the implications of what is happening.

The Twist: Homer doesn't do any of these things.  Or rather, he doesn't do any of these things well.  To give him credit, part of it is certainly that The Odyssey is an oral work, and the stuff that doesn't work well in book form might work better being orated to the audience.  But mostly, I think, his problem is that good writing hadn't been invented yet.  "Show, don't tell" is a relatively recent adage.  (I think - I haven't studied the history of adventure story writing except by reading adventure stories written in different time periods.)

[Golden Applesauce]

A quick summary of The Odyssey, for those of you who haven't read it:

Odysseus (the guy who came up with the idea for the Trojan Horse) hasn't come home (to Ithaca) yet, 10 years after the battle of Troy.  The battle of Troy itself took 10 years, which was considered by the Greeks to be an awful long time. [compare US wars in middle east ].  So Odysseus has been away from home for 20 years, and everybody thinks he's dead.

Meanwhile, at home, a bunch (100~150) of hooligan nobles and other elite members of Ithacan society have been having a continuous 3-year party of the century at Odysseus's palace, ostensibly to woo his wife, Penelope.  Their reasoning is that Odysseus is certainly dead by now, so Penelope should hurry up and marry herself off to one of them so they can have all of Odysseus's property (he was a local lord, so the richest guy on the island.)  Penelope was stalling by saying she would marry after she had finished weaving this robe (she was actually un-weaving it every night, so she would never finish) but an unfaithful maid told all the suitors about the trick, and they forced her to finish it.

Odysseus's son, Telemachus, who was either born just before or just after Odysseus left for Troy, has grown up without his father, and is getting increasingly pissed that these hundred odd people are screwing around in his house, eating all his food, annoying his mother, eating all of his food, sleeping with his servant girls (implied in some cases to be rape), and eating all of his food.  But he's a wuss and outnumbered, so he can't do anything about it.

So Pallas Athene, special patron of Odysseus, decides to do something about it.  She sends Telemachus out to visit some of Odysseus's old war buddies (also local lords/kings) in Pylos and Sparta, to learn more about his dad and grow a pair.  More or less immediately after she visits him, he starts telling off the suitors in his halls.

Odysseus is being held captive on an island by a minor goddess (major nymph?) named Calypso, who wants to marry him.  He refuses, and spends the whole time sulking because he wants to go home.  Athena gets Zeus to send Hermes to Calypso to tell her to set Odysseus free, which results in the funniest exchange in the whole book: Calypso complains of the double standard that goddesses aren't ever allowed to keep their mortal lovers (reeling off a long list of men destroyed for having relations with female divinities) while Zeus can turn into a bull or swan and fuck anything that moves without any consequences.  Hermes responds by saying that well, do you think I wanted to come here?  Your island is in the middle of nowhere and walking over all that water is really boring, but we can't go against Zeus so hurry up and let him go.  So she does.

Odysseus sails off to Phaecia, where apparently everyone has Trojan War Hero levels of skill in everything, especially sailing.  (Although they don't actually use sails - their boats are so awesome that they steer via telekinesis or something.)  He gets wined and dined, and recounts the story of how he came to be all alone on an island where a goddess tried to coerce him into marriage.

So after the Trojan war, Odysseus takes his share of the soldiers and head back towards home.  One thing leads to another, and the end up sacking some random city.  Odysseus tells his companions to hurry up the pillaging and get a move on, but his soldiers are to busy partying and are still there when the soldiers from the neighboring cities show up and kill a bunch of them.  Oops.

Then he lands on an island, where food and game are plentiful.  Odysseus decides to go wandering of exploring with twelve friends.  The find a huge cave with a lot of cheeses and stuff in it, so the decide to check it out but surprise!  A cyclops lives in that cave, and he comes home and seals the entrance with a really big rock.  Odysseus eventually gets the cyclops in the eye with a big pointy stick, but not before the Cyclops eats half of his friends.  Note that six people - none of whom are Odysseus - die because Odysseus shows less caution than a typical D&D character.  Oh, and as they're escaping, Odysseus tells the cyclops his name.  Which is a huge mistake, because the cyclops he blinded was Poseidon's favorite cyclops, Poseidon is undisputed lord of the sea, and Odysseus is sailing a boat.  You can guess how that turns out for him later.

So he sails a bit more and ends up at the palace of the lord of the winds, Aeolos.  Aeolos throws a big feast for everyone involved, and afterwards gives them a steady wind to Ithaca and a large goatskin bag containing even more wind.  The ship is in sight of home when some wiseguy among the crew says "Hey, how come Odysseus gets a present and we don't?  Lets open it and see what he got."  So they open it, and it had a hurricane inside.  All Odysseus had to do was tell his crew "Nobody open this bag, because Aeolos put gale-force winds inside and if you open it we'll probably sink." instead of saying "Nobody open this bag, because it's MINE!".  The story tries to pass the blame onto everybody but Odysseus, but I think he's at least as at fault as his companions here.

They go back to Aeolos and ask for a second run.  But by this time, word has gotten around that Poseidon has it in for Odysseus, and Aeolos patiently explains that he can't help who has earned the wrath of the gods.  If Odysseus hadn't told the cyclops his name, they would have been able to return home at this point and no one else would have had to die.

So they sail more and visit some more islands and do various things.  At one point they go to an island and everyone pulls their ship into a natural harbor except for Odysseus, because he's paranoid that way.  A scouting party goes into the island and finds another tribe of giants, who immediately eat 2/3rds of the party and sink every ship in the harbor by throwing rocks at them.  Odysseus's ship alone survives, and this is ascribed to his cleverness or something because he didn't park is boat in the spot most susceptible to giant attack.  He pretty much says "I have a bad feeling about this.  You guys go ahead." and everyone else gets squished by giants.

Odysseus's fleet now reduced to one ship, they wander around a bit more until they reach the island of Circe.  By this point, everyone on the ship is well and truly paranoid of apparently uninhabited islands, so they split into two groups and draw lots for who has to go explore the island.  Odysseus wins and gets to stay by the ship; the other group goes deeper into the island, find a charming young goddess (witch?) and all get turned into pigs (except one guy who runs back to the ship to tell everyone what happened.)  Odysseus wanders, alone, out to Circe's palace, but is intercepted by Hermes, who gives him a potion to make him immune to Circe's wand of polymorph other, and tells him what to do to defeat her.  He is to go inside, where Circe will give him food and try to turn him into a pig.  After she fails, he is to draw his sword and attack her, whereupon she will ask to sleep with him, and he is to agree.  Odysseus goes inside and everything happens as Hermes predicted.  When she asks to sleep with him, he makes her swear by the gods that she won't harm him, and turn his companions back into men, both of which she does.  It's not clear if he actually does sleep with her or not, but Circe suddenly becomes very friendly and feasts the entire ship of hungry sailors until the end of the year, where she tells Odysseus where he has to go in order to go home.  The chain of events is: Circe tries to eat half of Odysseus's crew -> Odysseus attacks her with a sword -> "Let's have sex" -> Circe gives everyone a magic feast.  WTF.  She goes from the most dangerous single person they have encountered to date to being their most powerful ally (save Pallas Athene, I guess) for no clear motive.  At all.  I don't think she actually bangs Odysseus, either; the text just states that she "did not persuade the heart within his breast."  So maybe they did have sex but Odysseus just wasn't really into it, I dunno.

Circe sends them onto Hades, where Odysseus meets a bunch of famous dead heroes and famous dead women (no overlap, this is ancient Greece) and gets a dead seer to tell him the entire plot of the story.  They return to Circe, who explains all about the Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis, and how to get past them.  Odysseus does so, although the Scylla eats another six of his crew.

At this point, they come to the island of Hyperion, where it has been foreshadowed throughout the epic (including by the dead seer in Hades) that they will kill the cattle of the sun and thereby lose their "day of return."  Odysseus wants to skip this island, but the rest of his crew point out that they don't have Greek hero main character abilities of endurance, and need food.  They outvote him and land on the island to forage for food and rest.  A huge storm comes up and prevents them from leaving.  Note that if they had listened to Odysseus, the storm would have caught them at sea and killed all of them.  Anyway, they find this herd of magic cows.  Odysseus (having been warned by the seer about what happens next) warns them not to fuck with the cattle in any way, and they follow his advice ... until they reach starvation levels of hunger.  Odysseus falls asleep (this is the signal for his crew to screw things up, he was asleep when they opened the bag containing Hurricane Aeolos as well) and the crew decides that if they eat the cows, a god might kill them, but if they don't, they will surely starve.  Weighing the options, they decide against certain death.  Odysseus wakes up and says "You fools!  What was the one thing I told you not to do?  Quick, sacrifice all the cows you killed to the gods and maybe they won't kill us all."  So they do, but Hyperion is not impressed by a burnt offering of his own irreplaceable cattle.  (The cattle, being magic, don't breed at all.  So he only has a finite number of magic cows.)  Hyperion asks Zeus for revenge, who promptly throws a lightning bolt at Odysseus's ship, killing everyone except for Odysseus himself, who eventually floats to Calypso's island.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Normally I would love to respond to this sort of thing, but I'm just not in the mindset for it. Sorry. Probably wouldn't have even responded with this but it seems like you're getting nothing atm, and just wanted to acknowledge that someone read it.

[Golden Applesauce]

After retelling his story to the Phaecians, they give him lots of presents and ferry him to Ithaca, where they leave him sleeping, by himself, on the shore with a huge pile of valuables.  Pallas Athene introduces herself to him, and he goes to his house in a magic disguise granted by Athene.  Together, he and this son Telemachus kill all of the suitors and all of the serving girls who slept with any of the suitors (by coercion or not) by this diabolical plan:  Telemachus hides all of the weapons lying around the house in one room, and gets two loyal servants to lock all of the doors to the outside.  That's actually as far as they thought out their plan.

What triggers the slaughter is Penelope announcing that she'll finally marry the guy who can string Odysseus's old bow and shoot an arrow through (?) twelve axes lined up in a row.  All of the suitors fail to even string the bow; Odysseus (still in disguise as a beggar) does and then shoots his arrow through all twelve axes, Robin Hood style.  Then he shoots the most annoying of the suitors in the throat and announces that he's the motherfucking Odysseus, Sacker of Cities, to a crowd of 100-150 men all in their prime, while he is armed only with a bow and less than 30 arrows.  The only thing in his favor is that Telemachus hid all their weapons earlier.

It should be mentioned that this point that at least once a chapter, someone mentions how nice it would be if Odysseus were to come home and slaughter every last one of the suitors.  In several instances this is told to the suitors themselves, who brush it off in the mistaken belief that Odysseus is dead.  So when they realize that Odysseus really his home, holding his bow, and they're unarmed, there is a collective oh, shit moment.

The second-in-command of the suitors, Eurymachos, who seems like a reasonable fellow, notes that hero or not, they outnumber Odysseus, and if they use the tables for cover they could advance to his position and tackle him en masse, where his bow can't help him.  The he ignores his advice about the tables and charges Odysseus alone, for which he is shot in the left nipple and spends 4-6 lines bouncing off of various objects on his way to the ground.  One other moron charges Odysseus, and Telemachus stabs him with a spear.  At this point all the suitors run the the courtyard, while Odysseus shoots them until he runs out of arrows.  Meanwhile, Telemachus runs off to the armory and brings back some javelins, shields, and helmets.  Unfortunately, a servant who ended up being loyal to the suitors figures out that all of the weapons and armor were probably stashed in the treasure room, and brings some gear to the suitors.  If either Odysseus or Telemachus had thought to either to hide the stuff somewhere clever, or had just locked the door, the suitors would have been completely unarmed.  But it's okay, because Athena likes him.  So they end up in a fight where they Telemachus, Odysseus, and two servants take turns throwing javelins at the suitors, and the suitors throw javelins at them.  It's described in the poem like a spectacularly boring D&D fight.

Odysseus: I throw a javelin at them.
DM: Roll to hit... you kill Demoptolemus.  A suitor throws a javelin at you -
Athene: I'm a god.  It misses.
DM: Okay, it misses.
Telemachus: I throw a javelin.
DM: Roll to hit... you kill Eurypades.  A suitor throws a javelin at your swineherd -
Athene: And misses.
DM: Fine.  The swineherd throws a javelin, and kills Elatos, a suitor throws a javelin and misses...

Repeat that for few cycles.  Eventually even Athene gets board of this, and hold up the Aegis, which causes all the suitors to scatter, and Odysseus, Telemachus, and two servants kill the remaining hundred-odd suitors in hand-to-hand combat.  Then they kill a bunch of the serving girls, and then everyone still alive lives happily ever after.

[Golden Applesauce]

Normally I would love to respond to this sort of thing, but I'm just not in the mindset for it. Sorry. Probably wouldn't have even responded with this but it seems like you're getting nothing atm, and just wanted to acknowledge that someone read it.

That's fine.  I'm not really sure what a good response would be, to be honest.

This experiment doesn't seem to be working.  I thought that somehow writing this out would help me organize my thoughts, but it isn't really, and if I write up the big rant about how everyone (in-story + my teacher) keeps saying how awesome and clever Odysseus is when all he ever does is get his companions killed, get rescued by gods, and then sulk about all of his problems I'm never going to get started on real meat of the essay.  So the promised rant isn't coming.  Maybe this should be moved to Bring & Brag anyway.  Or Principia Discussion, because that seems like where the rest of the discussion of classical mythology ends up.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Normally I would love to respond to this sort of thing, but I'm just not in the mindset for it. Sorry. Probably wouldn't have even responded with this but it seems like you're getting nothing atm, and just wanted to acknowledge that someone read it.

That's fine.  I'm not really sure what a good response would be, to be honest.

This experiment doesn't seem to be working.  I thought that somehow writing this out would help me organize my thoughts, but it isn't really, and if I write up the big rant about how everyone (in-story + my teacher) keeps saying how awesome and clever Odysseus is when all he ever does is get his companions killed, get rescued by gods, and then sulk about all of his problems I'm never going to get started on real meat of the essay.  So the promised rant isn't coming.  Maybe this should be moved to Bring & Brag anyway.  Or Principia Discussion, because that seems like where the rest of the discussion of classical mythology ends up.

Could be a starting point about Odysseus' character development.

Sounds like a piss-poor Captain to me.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

ie- perhaps you could make the argument that Odysseus has a character anti-development, with an increasing overdependence of divine intervention as opposed to ration faculty, and having his buddies ass fucked in the process.

Sorry if I'm off the mark, but again, not right mind set. Bad couple of hours re: family, sleep debt, and poor recollection of the Odyssey.

[Requia ☣]

After retelling his story to the Phaecians, they give him lots of presents and ferry him to Ithaca, where they leave him sleeping, by himself, on the shore with a huge pile of valuables.

Wait, wasn't homer a begger that got his coin by telling stories?

[Golden Applesauce]

ie- perhaps you could make the argument that Odysseus has a character anti-development, with an increasing overdependence of divine intervention as opposed to ration faculty, and having his buddies ass fucked in the process.

Sorry if I'm off the mark, but again, not right mind set. Bad couple of hours re: family, sleep debt, and poor recollection of the Odyssey.

That was my plan, except we are specifically not to talk about Odysseus.  I think she wants us to talk about minor, irrelevant characters to make it harder to use sparknotes or something.

I have an essay topic now, so I guess I'll go write it.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

ie- perhaps you could make the argument that Odysseus has a character anti-development, with an increasing overdependence of divine intervention as opposed to ration faculty, and having his buddies ass fucked in the process.

Sorry if I'm off the mark, but again, not right mind set. Bad couple of hours re: family, sleep debt, and poor recollection of the Odyssey.

That was my plan, except we are specifically not to talk about Odysseus.  I think she doesn't want us to talk about minor, irrelevant characters to make it harder to use sparknotes or something.

I have an essay topic now, so I guess I'll go write it.

Good luck boss. I always hated assigned essay questions. They are almost always limited and scope and never allow for any actual  worthy discussion to take place.
If I ever end up as a teacher, which may be my ultimate fate, hold me to this statement, and remind me to leave essay questions open ended.

[Golden Applesauce]

After retelling his story to the Phaecians, they give him lots of presents and ferry him to Ithaca, where they leave him sleeping, by himself, on the shore with a huge pile of valuables.

Wait, wasn't homer a begger that got his coin by telling stories?

"Homer" was mostly likely a collection of poets who successively refined the epic poems of the time.  They weren't beggars (at least not most of them) - being able to memorize an entire poem was something of a mark of education and class.  Think more like professional entertainers.  Which I guess is only really one step up from being a beggar.  They were as much poet as storyteller, reciting particular, carefully formalized epics and fables.

In this particular case, Odysseus was just recounting his adventures as a party guest, rather than telling a specific poem-ified story.  But what you're getting at is true - if you pick a random person from the epic who is said to be godlike in some ability, you're either going to get one of the heroes of the Trojan War or a poet who sings about them.  Every good king Telemachus and Odysseus meet on their travels has a poet who is either legendary, godlike, or an actual demigod.  So there's definitely a little self-promotion involved.

[Golden Applesauce]

ie- perhaps you could make the argument that Odysseus has a character anti-development, with an increasing overdependence of divine intervention as opposed to ration faculty, and having his buddies ass fucked in the process.

Sorry if I'm off the mark, but again, not right mind set. Bad couple of hours re: family, sleep debt, and poor recollection of the Odyssey.

That was my plan, except we are specifically not to talk about Odysseus.  I think she doesn't want us to talk about minor, irrelevant characters to make it harder to use sparknotes or something.

I have an essay topic now, so I guess I'll go write it.

Good luck boss. I always hated assigned essay questions. They are almost always limited and scope and never allow for any actual  worthy discussion to take place.

If I ever end up as a teacher, which may be my ultimate fate, hold me to this statement, and remind me to leave essay questions open ended.

In a way, that's almost as bad.  Without enough direction, most students will either pick something that cannot be adequately explored in a short essay or something that doesn't take a whole essay to cover completely.  Specifying a topic also lets you direct the students to study a specific topic (like characterization or suspense-building, in this case) on their own.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

ie- perhaps you could make the argument that Odysseus has a character anti-development, with an increasing overdependence of divine intervention as opposed to ration faculty, and having his buddies ass fucked in the process.

Sorry if I'm off the mark, but again, not right mind set. Bad couple of hours re: family, sleep debt, and poor recollection of the Odyssey.

That was my plan, except we are specifically not to talk about Odysseus.  I think she doesn't want us to talk about minor, irrelevant characters to make it harder to use sparknotes or something.

I have an essay topic now, so I guess I'll go write it.

Good luck boss. I always hated assigned essay questions. They are almost always limited and scope and never allow for any actual  worthy discussion to take place.

If I ever end up as a teacher, which may be my ultimate fate, hold me to this statement, and remind me to leave essay questions open ended.

In a way, that's almost as bad.  Without enough direction, most students will either pick something that cannot be adequately explored in a short essay or something that doesn't take a whole essay to cover completely.  Specifying a topic also lets you direct the students to study a specific topic (like characterization or suspense-building, in this case) on their own.

Ok, maybe I'll give 6 questions with the option for an open ended 7 th if prefered.

Twid,
Hated limitations in school

[LMNO]

I dunno if the time has run out, but whenever I was stuck in college, I would randomly choose another work that I liked better, and then claim that the two stories were related to each other.  After that, it was a simple application of the Lo5, and some clever wordplay.  I was almost always wrong, but the audacious attempt was usually worth a B+.

[Cramulus]

Odysseus: I throw a javelin at them.
DM: Roll to hit... you kill Demoptolemus.  A suitor throws a javelin at you -
Athene: I'm a god.  It misses.
DM: Okay, it misses.
Telemachus: I throw a javelin.
DM: Roll to hit... you kill Eurypades.  A suitor throws a javelin at your swineherd -
Athene: And misses.
DM: Fine.  The swineherd throws a javelin, and kills Elatos, a suitor throws a javelin and misses...

Repeat that for few cycles.  Eventually even Athene gets board of this, and hold up the Aegis, which causes all the suitors to scatter, and Odysseus, Telemachus, and two servants kill the remaining hundred-odd suitors in hand-to-hand combat.  Then they kill a bunch of the serving girls, and then everyone still alive lives happily ever after.

I do love this part of the poem though. it's the classical equivalent of RAMBO: First Blood