The Odyssey Book 6

{part one: scenes and characters}
Book 6 begins with Athena going into Princess Nausicaa's dream. In the dream, Athena is disguised as the princess' friend, and she convinces her to go to the river the next day to wash her clothes so that she will look more presentable to the men who are courting her. Athena tells Nausicaa, "You won't stay unwed long. The noblest men in the country court you now, all Phaeacians just like you, Phaeacia-born and raised" (169). Athena's reasoning behind influencing the princess to go down to the river was because she needed someone to find Odysseus, who had just recently washed up on the shore of Phaeacia. At first I was confused as to why, of all the people in Phaeacia, Athena would pick the princess to discover Odysseus. She could have easily gone to some townsman, appeared in his dream, and sent him to the river bank. But then i realized, Athena wanted someone who could give the castaway king the luxury he deserved. If Odysseus were to get help from the princess, then he would get the better accommodations than if he were found/helped by an ordinary townsman. So, the next day Nausicaa is with her hand-maids when she finds Odysseus. Her first instinct is to run away from the strange (naked) man. But, something keeps her from running. It was Athena who made her courageous enough to stay and hear Odysseus out. In this scene, we the readers really see the toll the actions of the gods has taken on this man. He survived years of war, and when he finally is able to go home to his loved ones, he is not able to because of an angry god. He lost his entire crew and was kept against his will on an island for another couple of years. So, when he came upon the young princess, the only thing he wishes for is, "compassion- princess, please!" (174). Of course the princess helps Odysseus, for she sees that he is deserving of whatever kindness she can offer him.
                 <guiding question one> When the princess agrees to help Odysseus, she says to him, "it's Olympian Zeus himself who hands our fortunes out, to each of us in turn, to the good and bad, however Zeus prefers... He gave you pain, it seems. You simply have to bear it" (174). This quote made me think about what Odysseus thinks of the gods, because apparently the Greeks are aware and accepting of the fact that these are not loving gods. It seems that everyone in Ancient Greece believed in the gods and were always wary of doing anything that would disrespect them, but what about Odysseus? He has endured trial after trial from the gods, so why would he care about respecting them? Do you think that, when Odysseus finally makes it back to Ithaca, he will continue to have unwavering faith in the gods? Or, will he be too badly scarred by what they did to him and turn away from them completely?


{part two: illuminate the text}
LITERARY DEVICES:
     Imagery: When Odysseus is left alone to bathe and get dressed, it is described that Athena uses her powers to make him look more appealing to the young girls' eyes. Athena made the king appear taller than he previously was, made him look more muscular, made his hair look thick and healthy, and finally, she "lavished splendor" on him. I'm not sure what splendor is exactly, but from the text I can guess that is it sort of this god-like glow. When the girls saw him after his transformation, Nausicaa said, "at first he seemed appalling, i must say- now he seems like a god who rules the skies up there! Ah, if only a man like that were called my husband, lived right here, pleased to stay forever..." (176).
     Irony: I might be looking too far into this, but I thought it was a little bit ironic when Princess Nausicaa left Odysseus in the grove while she went into town. I thought this because, here is Odysseus who was an exile being help captive by Calypso. While he was with the goddess, he was virtually alone. But, he was able to seek freedom, and the first people who come to help him have to hide him from the town, making him an exile once again. I know that they are just doing this because it would be easier on everyone to escape the questions from the townspeople, but it did seem a little ironic to me that they had to keep Odysseus a secret.
TRANSLATOR NOTES:
Due to the fact that book six is relatively short when compared to the other books we have already read, there was not a lot in the translator's notes section. But, one thing did stick out to me. When Odysseus said, "Should he fling his arms around her knees, the young beauty, plead for help" (173) I was a little confused. Why would he want to throw his arms around her knees? According to the translator's notes, though, this was the position of the suppliant (beggar, beseecher). This gesture was supposed to convey the helplessness and dependence of the person kneeling on the ground. So, when Odysseus considered doing this, it was because he wanted to show the princess that he was in desperate need of help and that he could not do anything without her assistance.
EPIC MACHINERY:
    epithets: Princess Nausicaa's hand maids are referred to frequently as "girls with lovely braids", which made me think of the previous book. In book five, the goddess Calypso was always described as having lovely braids. So, maybe because the girls are now being defined the same way, it is supposed to convey that the girls are so pretty, they can be compared to gods. Another thing I noticed about epithets in this book was a change in how a new morning was described. It was previously described (many times) as, "When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more", but in this book it said, "Dawn soon rose on her splendid throne" (170). A change in how something is being described (something that has been described the same way for most of the book) could mean a significant change in events. Maybe the change was supposed to show Odysseus' change in luck because he was found later that day.
       <guiding question two> Why do you think it was necessary that Athena alter Odysseus' appearance so that he seemed more attractive to the girls? Was to help him advance in his journey in anyway by alter perceptions of him? Or was it just because Athena thought he deserved to look like himself when meeting the royal family of Phaeacia, especially after all he had been through?


{part three: making connections}
 THEMES: The themes of book 6 are generosity and trust. When Odysseus stumbled upon the girls, he thought for sure he would scare them away. For he was a large, battered man covered in brine from the sea and completely naked. He would have scared all of them away if it were not for some help from Athena. The maids all scattered from the sight of him, but Nausicaa had god-given strength, so she stayed and heard his story. She showed a great amount of trust when she decided to help him. For all she knew, he could have been a crazy person who made up the whole story to get closer to her. She also showed generosity when she said, "seeing you've reached our city and our land, you'll never lack for clothing or any other gift" (174).
CONNECTIONS: One thing I thought of when thinking of the themes of generosity and trust was the movie The Blind Side. It is based on a true story and it is about when a wealthy family takes in an underprivileged kid. They give him a place to stay without ever really knowing anything about him. It works out for the best because, in the end, the parents adopt him and he becomes an official part of the family.
         <guiding question> If you were to come up on a person who, like Odysseus, looked like they were in some trouble and could use help, what would you do? Would you run away because they might be a threat? Would you offer your house as a place to stay? Or, would you find some middle ground?

Stronger

Ooh hey, yeah

Hush, just stop
There’s nothing you can do or say, baby
I’ve had enough
I’m not your property as from today, baby
You might think that I won't make it on my own
But now I’m…
[Chorus:]Stronger than yesterday
Now it’s nothing but my way
My loneliness ain’t killing me no more
I’m stronger

That I ever thought that I could be, baby
I used to go with the flow
Didn’t really care ‘bout me
You might think that I can’t take it, but you’re wrong
‘Cause now I’m…

[CHORUS:]
Stronger than yesterday
Now it’s nothing but my way
My loneliness ain’t killing me no more
I’m stronger

Come on, now
Oh, yeah
Here I go, on my own
I don’t need nobody, better off aloneHere I go, on my own now
I don’t need nobody, not anybody
Here I go, alright, here I go

[Repeat CHORUS]

Stronger than yesterday
Now it’s nothing but my way
My loneliness ain’t killing me no more
I’m stronger

While reading A Doll's House, the lyrics from Britney Spears' "Stronger" came into my head. I thought of the song when Nora was leaving Torvald. The whole time I was reading this play, I thought that Torvald was either going to divorce her, or he would forgive her and she would just be overcome with joy. I never thought that she would have to strength to leave him, especially because she spent the whole play terrified of him finding out her secret.

When Torvald found out that his wife went behind his back to borrow money, he was furious. That is until he found out that Krogstad was not going to blackmail them and nobody would ever find out what Nora did. When Torvald realized that his wife's transgression would go unreported to the public, he found it easy to forgive Nora. However, Nora was done with Torvald. Nora decided to do something that women of the time did not do.

She decided to leave Torvald even though he was willing to take her back. Nora showed strength when she walked out on Torvald, because she was walking out on a husband of many years, her children, and her easy way of life. When she left, she did it to find her true self. But, a women supporting herself back then was not easy because the lack of high paying jobs.

Even though the odds of leading a successful life without a husband were against her, Nora still went out on her own. It took tremendous strength to take that risk, especially when she was leaving behind such an easy way of life. But just like in the song, she was leaving because she would not be his property (his doll) anymore.

Blackhawks Ice Crew

I am a pretty big fan of the Chicago Blackhawks (even before their Stanley Cup win!). I love the game, the intensity, the players- the only thing I don't love is the parade of scantily clad pretty girls referred to as the Blackhawks Ice Crew. They come around to "clean" the ice when TV takes a short commercial break. Their job is to clean the ice off for the players, but their unofficial purpose is to draw in fans (specially targeting the male population). In fact, when they come out dressed in their revealing tops and short skirts, they do not even clean the ice, there are official looking men in black who do the actual cleaning.


In my opinion, girls doing jobs like this sets the woman's movement back thirty years. Women used to fight tooth and nail to get respect from men, trying to prove that we can do anything they can do. However, these girls come in and are depicted as a bobble-head male fantasy. And the fact that they are doing a job this demeaning says something about the amount of self-respect they have.


It may seem that I don't like the individual girls who do this job, but that is not necessarily true. What I do not like is the idea of using cute girls skating around the rink as a form of entertainment. Back then, women and girls were supposed to be poised and polished, like their only job in the world was to look pretty for men. Some may say that they are sort of like the cheerleaders of hockey, and what could be wrong with that? Well, the main reason girls were all cheerleaders in their high school was because that was the only thing they were allowed to participate in.


The Blackhawks Ice Crew plays into the ideas from A Doll's House because Nora says, "I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you wanted it like that. You and father have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life. our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was father's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls" (Act Three). Nora feels like she is being played like a doll to live out her husband's fantasy, just like how the Ice Crew plays out the male fantasy of perfect figure skaters running around, cleaning up the messes of the professional male athletes. Nora feels like her only purpose in her marriage is to perform tricks for her husband, and you could make the argument that the Ice Crew only exists to entertain the male fans in the audience of the United Center during TV breaks.


Also in A Doll's House, Dr. Rank refers to Nora's everyday dresses. He mentions that she could easily wear one of her everyday dresses to the next masquerade ball they attend. This shows that Nora has to dress up everyday to play the part of the perfect wife to Torvald. She dresses so well to keep up her image, that her dresses are fit for a ball. The outfits worn by the Ice Crew are considerably different from those worn by Nora, but the Crew still puts on a costume that is designed to hide who they really are and just show the stereotype they are supposed to represent.


In case you don't know about the Blackhawks Ice Crew, check out this clip of the 2009 Ice Crew auditions on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYAC2v3Ec6M&feature=related

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Sunday night, while recovering from a tough Blackhawks loss, I was channel surfing when I stumbled across the movie Anchorman starring Will Ferrell. I immediately flipped to it because it had been years since I had seen it. Over the years, I had forgotten about how funny the movie was. Also, I had forgotten how sexist the characters were. Anchorman is set in the 1970s when women were starting to really make progress in entering previously male dominated industries (like broadcasting and journalism). Some of the sexist quotes from the movie include:

Brian Fantana: Don't get me wrong, I love the ladies. I mean they rev my engines, but they don't belong in the newsroom!

Champ Kind: It is anchorMAN, not anchorLADY! And that is a scientific fact.

Bartender: You know, times are changing. Ladies can do stuff now and you're going to learn how to deal with it.

Ron Burgundy: What? Were you saying something? Look, I don't speak Spanish.

Veronica Corningstone: I told you that I wanted to be an anchor. I told you that.

Ron Burgundy: I thought you were kidding! I even wrote it down in my diary, "Veronica had a very funny joke today!" I laughed at it later that night!

Ron Burgundy: I'm not a baby, I am a man. I am an anchorman.

Veronica Corningstone: You are not a man. You are a big fat joke.

Ron Burgundy: I'm a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am. You're just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It's science.

Even though this movie's characters are supposed to be a bit of an exaggeration for comedic purposes, however, the characters still represent the feeling that men held of the time. It used to be that, even though women were allowed to hold jobs, they were not really allowed to advance in their careers. This was referred to as the "Glass Ceiling". For example, in the movie, the qualified Veronica Corningstone was hired by the news station because the all-male cast did not look good for the station's image. Veronica was not able to advance to co-anchor until Ron missed the broadcast and she was the only one who could read the news. 

Anchorman reminded me of the play A Doll's House when it comes to the character's views in the advancement in a woman's place in society. Anchorman shows how women were not able to advance in their careers, but A Doll's House shows that women did not even have certain legal rights. In the play, Nora had to get a loan behind her husband's (Tovald) back because women were not allowed to borrow money without permission from their husbands or fathers. The reason Nora needed to borrow money was so she could pay for a trip down south for her and her family so Torvald could recover from his illness (which was not stated in the play). Nora is then forced to lie to Torvald and and gets blackmailed by a man at the bank so he would not expose her. 

Nora's friend, Christina, also shows how males dominated the workplace back then. In Christina's past, she was forced to marry a man she did not love just to take care of her family. Her family was in desperate need of money, and Christina was the only one who was old enough to try to take care of everyone. Now, because women were deemed unqualified to work high paying jobs, she would not have made enough money to support her family on her own. So, Christina had to marry a man in order to get by. 

Titanic and A Doll's House

When reading A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, I thought of a scene from the 1997 movie Titanic. Here is how the scene plays out- seventeen year old Rose is on the luxury liner the RMS Titanic with her wealthy fiance Cal. However, one night she decides to go out with a young artist named Jack from a low social class. When Cal confronts Rose about her indiscretions with Jack, he says to her;

Cal: "My fian... my fiance! Yes, you are, and my wife. My wife in practice if not yet by law, so you will honor me. You will honor me the way a wife is required to honor a husband. Because i will not be made a fool of, Rose. Is that in anyway unclear?"
Rose: "No"

This scene relates to A Doll's House because Cal's words ("You will honor me") reflect the old ways of thinking about marriages and women's involvement in them. It was thought that men were the strong providers, and women were sensitive and dependent and their only jobs were to be a good wife and mother. In A Doll's House, Torvald tells Nora, "First and foremost, you are a wife and mother" (Act 3). Torvald says this to her when he tells him that she is going to leave him so she can find out for herself who she is and what she wants to do with her life. It was very radical for a women to act like this back in the 1800s. It was so radical in fact, that Ibsen was forced to write and alternative ending to his play shortly before its debut in Germany because of fear that it would not be accepted.


When Cal says, "Because I will not be made a fool of, Rose", he is reflecting the views of Torvald in A Doll's House. In the play, Torvald does many things to ensure that he will not be embarrassed by his wife. For example, the main reason behind making such a showing of firing Krogstad was that he did not want people in town and his business to think that he could be swayed by the beliefs of his wife. Also, Torvald listened to Nora when she asked him to not open the letters and to instead help her on her dance because, if she screwed up the tartanella in front of everyone, it would make Torvald feel like a fool. So, back then, men not only kept their wives in check because they thought the only job they could perform was the job of "caretaker", but they also kept them in check because a rogue wife would be considered an embarrassment.