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Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷"):
msbellows@c.im ("M.S. Bellows, Jr.") wrote:
Yeah, yeah, Facebook, but this is brilliant: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1MCCancxKy/
"My favorite thing about The Odyssey is that when you notice how the poem is structured, the whole thing starts looking like Odysseus is just making up an alibi after coming home from a 10-year Fuckboy Tour of the Mediterranean.
See, the parts of The Odyssey that Homer narrates directly are surprisingly grounded. At the beginning we see Ithaca, Telemachus travels around looking for news of his father, and so on. At the end Odysseus returns, kills the suitors, and everyone is happy (except for the suitors). The gods interfere constantly because this is ancient Greece, but mostly it's a story about people doing people shit just like The Iliad.
But in the middle section, the narration very conspicuously shifts from Homer to Odysseus himself. He's explaining to the Phaeacians why it took him ten years to sail home from Troy, and suddenly we're dealing with one-eyed giants, cannibal armies, a witch who turns men into pigs, magic bags full of wind, six-headed sea monsters, and a trip to the Underworld.
Odysseus tells his story to the Phaeacians while he is stranded, broke, and in desperate need of a ship home. And remember that Odysseus is not merely capable of lying – lying is basically his superpower. He routinely invents elaborate fake biographies for himself at the drop of a hat, to the point that even Athena is impressed with his capacity for deception. He is canonically the original male manipulator.
And it makes sense why Homer depicts Odysseus telling all of this to the Phaeacians instead of the much-less-gullible Penelope, since you can imagine how his story would have gone over with her:
"Odysseus, the Trojan War ended 10 years ago. Where have you been all this time?"
"See what had happened was, we were gonna come straight home – but then when we were in sight of Ithaca, my men opened this magic bag of wind while I was asleep and it blew us to the other side of the ocean."
"Why did they open the bag after you told them not to?"
"Ah, well, see, I sort of forgot."
"Your men all died because you had a magic bag of wind that you forgot to tell them not to open and then took a nap?"
"No, they were all fine! But see, then a cyclops and some giant cannibals killed most of the men, and a witch turned the rest into pigs. But don't worry, they got better."
"They got better?"
"Well sure, the witch changed them back after I slept with her."
"...I see. Well, I suppose you had to save your men."
"Exactly! And so after a year with her-"
"You slept with her for A YEAR?"
"Hermes told me to, baby!"
"The god Hermes told you to fuck another woman. For a year."
"Penelope, who am I to question the will of the gods? So then we went to the Underworld, and after a quick detour back to see Circe again-"
"YOU WENT BACK?"
"It was important, babe! She had to tell us how to avoid all the sea monsters!"
"The sea monsters."
"Oh, sure – loads of sea monsters out there. The sea is lousy with monsters these days."
"Uh huh. And did you sleep with her again?"
"I mean, it would have been rude not to..."
"ODYSSEUS."
"Will of the gods, baby, will of the gods! So anyway we're headed home for real this time, but the men ignored my extremely excellent advice and ate one of Helios' sacred cattle while I was asleep, and Zeus killed them all. Damndest thing. So I wash up naked on this beach with a beautiful nymph, and well, one thing kinda led to another..."
"Did you sleep with her for a year too?"
"Of course not!"
"Well, that's a relief."
"It was seven."
"SEVEN?"
"She bewitched me! I was bewitched! Can't fault a guy for what he does when he's bewitched, can you?"
"And did you meet any other women on this epic journey of yours?"
"Well, there was this teenage princess..."
"ODYSSEUS!"
"Nothing happened, babe, I swear! I just washed up naked on the beach right in front of her. Nice girl, you'd like her."
"Odysseus, this is the second time you've just happened to wash up naked on a beach right in front of a beautiful woman."
"I know! Crazy, right? Anyway, when I told her parents everything that had happened, they were so amazed that they gave me all this gold and a ride straight home so I could be with my beloved."
"After 10 years."
"Well yeah, straight home after 10 years. Don't forget the sea monsters, babe!"
"The sea monsters that you are conveniently the only person left alive to have witnessed."
"I don't love where you're going with that..."
"Odysseus, do you know what I did while you were gone?"
"...Waited faithfully for me?"
"I raised your son, ran your kingdom, kept a hundred men from taking your throne, and spent three years weaving and unweaving the same fucking burial shroud every night to keep them off my back."
"That's... actually very clever."
"Thank you."
"You know, between the two of us, that's really more my–"
"Finish that sentence and I'm sending you back to the Cyclops."