{"id":1392791,"date":"2016-09-02T11:00:56","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T15:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.sparknotes.com\/?p=1392791"},"modified":"2019-02-08T11:33:16","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T16:33:16","slug":"blogging-the-odyssey-part-1-the-one-where-athena-is-already-fed-up-with-poseidons-crap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/blog\/blogging-the-odyssey-part-1-the-one-where-athena-is-already-fed-up-with-poseidons-crap\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogging The Odyssey<\/em>: Part 1 (The One Where Athena Is Already Fed Up With Poseidon’s Crap)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Greetings, fellow journeymen on the road of life! For the uninitiated, I am Elodie. I’m one of the people on this hallowed site who blogs things. In the past, I have plodded through the terrible decisions and abrupt dictatorships<\/a> of Lord of the Flies<\/em>; I have trudged through the bizarre foreshadowing and unmistakable homoeroticism<\/a> of The Great Gatsby<\/em> \u00a0(only to be disappointed by the utter and egregious lack of endgame Natsby). Now I’m back (after a brief hiatus) to blog THE ODYSSEY<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I did not make this decision lightly. I thought about doing Of Mice and Men<\/em>, or Catch-22<\/em>, or maybe Moby Dick<\/em>, but then I didn’t, mostly because Elaine yoinked that last one<\/a> after beating me in the bi-weekly SparkNotes \u00a0battle melee, and she is too hilarious by half. No, I went with The Odyssey<\/em> because it is my own personal Everest. They all said it couldn’t be done, by which I mean I informed my boss of this decision, and she said, “Cool,” and I said, “DON’T TRY TO TALK ME OUT OF IT.”<\/p>\n

Besides, The Odyssey<\/em> has everything I look for \u00a0in a book, including but not limited to:<\/p>\n

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  1. Wacky sea monsters<\/li>\n
  2. A wily protagonist<\/li>\n
  3. Sirens luring weak-willed men to their untimely deaths<\/li>\n
  4. Zeus doing the stupid things<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And speaking of which!<\/p>\n

    BOOK 1: Athena Inspires the Prince<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The narrator invokes the Muse for inspiration and then unleashes a wealth of verse to get us up to speed (which is not unlike Aaron Burr dropping some sweet expositional rhymes about a certain bastard, orphan, son of a whore). We’re told that our hero, Odysseus, never came home from the war, that he was hindered on this quest because Poseidon hates him, that everyone back home believes him to be dead, and that his wife Penelope is currently being pestered by wannabe sex-havers since she is now technically on the market.<\/p>\n

    Whoa! That’s a ton of information! If it seems like we’re being dropped in the middle of this whole deal, that’s because we are. The story begins in media res<\/i>, which your teachers will tell you is a narrative technique meaning the story begins in the middle of the action and which I will tell you is a term you already know. Think, if you will, of:<\/p>\n