Daniel Mendelsohn's An Odyssey explores various cultural aspects that rub us wrong today. It seems overboard to kill all the men who courted his wife the 20 years he was gone. The boring early books of Telemachy set up the evolution of man through young adult hood in Telemachus to the life of the elderly in Laertes, with Odysseus as the hero. You can bring all your modern sentiments to viewing his life, some are astonished that Odysseus can pretend to be someone else when reunited with his wife. Agamemnon came home and was slaughtered by the his wife's lover Aegisthus. Odysseus is trying to avoid that fate, so he can't just walk in. He has to see if his wife's lover will kill him.
I was wondering why Telemachus couldn't just tell the kitchen to stop slaughtering and giving out wine, say we are out? That's what I'd do, but that must mean that hosting a guest is more sacred in those days than it is now.
I remember I was in the Amazonian rain-forest and we visited an inhabitant. He was very kind. The tour must give him a kickback for these visits, but it seemed very genuine. I sometimes wonder if these tribesmen are keys to our ancestral past. I've read Clan and the Cave Bear, and it's almost of form of science fiction except it's archaeology not technology oriented. Does this kindness to visitors tell us something about our ancestral past. It was a time when there was no smart phones, TV, video games, internet, iPads, e-mail, YouTube... I could go on and on. In those days it was an oral tradition, they didn't even really have books for the mass public, my favorite technology. A visitor must have been like the way I feel when I come upon a channel on YouTube that I like, or Netflix releases a season of a show I like. All the stories about all the people they know. And everyone is an oral story teller.
So Telemachus can't just dismiss them, and when he finally does try to do that. He says give me a ship and if I hear he's dead, I'll bury him and you can have my mother. Odysseus doesn't know everyone will kill him when he gets home like Agamemnon, and he hides to suss out the situation, to see if his wife has been faithful. Odysseus is a cunning man who like batman has the superpower of strategizing and self control.
I'm reading a graphic novel of Odyssey, and the above became clear to me. The more you get to know the story, the more complex it is, the more enjoyable it is.
I was wondering why Telemachus couldn't just tell the kitchen to stop slaughtering and giving out wine, say we are out? That's what I'd do, but that must mean that hosting a guest is more sacred in those days than it is now.
I remember I was in the Amazonian rain-forest and we visited an inhabitant. He was very kind. The tour must give him a kickback for these visits, but it seemed very genuine. I sometimes wonder if these tribesmen are keys to our ancestral past. I've read Clan and the Cave Bear, and it's almost of form of science fiction except it's archaeology not technology oriented. Does this kindness to visitors tell us something about our ancestral past. It was a time when there was no smart phones, TV, video games, internet, iPads, e-mail, YouTube... I could go on and on. In those days it was an oral tradition, they didn't even really have books for the mass public, my favorite technology. A visitor must have been like the way I feel when I come upon a channel on YouTube that I like, or Netflix releases a season of a show I like. All the stories about all the people they know. And everyone is an oral story teller.
So Telemachus can't just dismiss them, and when he finally does try to do that. He says give me a ship and if I hear he's dead, I'll bury him and you can have my mother. Odysseus doesn't know everyone will kill him when he gets home like Agamemnon, and he hides to suss out the situation, to see if his wife has been faithful. Odysseus is a cunning man who like batman has the superpower of strategizing and self control.
I'm reading a graphic novel of Odyssey, and the above became clear to me. The more you get to know the story, the more complex it is, the more enjoyable it is.
