—Anonymous
“Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met…Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginning.” —Odysseus in book 1 I still remembered that in the first class, we only analyzed the first paragraph of this epic theme. However, back to the beginning again after finishing the whole book, I really found this literature a good work from several perspectives. First of all, a great work needs to have an excellent storyline. In the book of Odysseus, the author uses the two-lane structure to construct a world of ancient Greek. On the one hand, Odysseus, the leading character, is released by Athena to start his journey of going home; on the other hand, his son, Telemachus, also sails out to find his father. Even though Telemachus finds nothing and the experience of Odysseus seems to be the more important plot, this branch story of Telemachus actually implies what the war of Troy has really caused to the Greece and tells the plots that are in parallel with Odysseus’s when he was painstakingly on his way home. Additionally, strictly speaking, the story of Ithaca can also be divided into two parts. One part is the journey of Telemachus, and the other part is the discourtesy of suitors and hesitation of Penelope. If the main storyline tells what Odysseus has been through, then the storyline of Ithaca actually tells what the return of Odysseus means from another perspective. Therefore, with the design of two-lane structure, the whole becomes richer, And when the two lines overlap eventually, they really add a sense of depth to the whole work. Furthermore, what I really appreciate about this work is that, even though this is a world full of superhuman strength, everyone here, includes the gods, is not perfectly flawless. It is true that they have power to be immortal and can determine the fate, it is also true that they are actually afraid of being blamed by the ordinary and even have shortcomings just like our human nature. This book always implies a principal to us: even we live in a world full of gods, we can still fight against our fates and get the assistance and respect from them, and that’s how this point connects to my own worldview and resonates with my thought. Because in my opinion, a good work should really provide some connections to our own life even sometimes with some exaggeration (just like the world with divine authority in Odysseus), however, it is exactly the sort of exaggeration that differentiates our world and leads us to a thought-provoking consideration of our life.
