Casually Completing Classics #15: The Odyssey Books 22-24

 Book 22

Summary: Oddy, Tele, and co. execute everyone.

Commentary: It's the section I read last night! As promised, I did some research on the executions of the women.

Here's a whole article on JSTOR (did you know you can get a free JSTOR account? you should go do it.) And here's a bit by Emily Wilson, who did the translation of The Odyssey that my stepdaughter read.

1. The women are generally translated as servants or just women, but were slaves. I guess executing a slave for fucking the people harassing your wife is slightly more justified in a culture that has them.

2. Odysseus suggests, "hacking them with your swordblades till you cut/ the life out of them," and Telemachus is the one who decides to hang them. Not really any better or worse, just a correction to my notes from last night.

Beyond that, there's a lot of graphic and/or weird shooting/stabbing (arrows from breast to liver!). A goat pun "goatish goatherd" that I appreciate, and some hacking people up and feeding parts of them to dogs. Rereading Fitzgerald and Butcher back to back really drives home how much better Fitzgerald's translation is. More readable, clearer, more vivid. Also, not a prose translation.

Book 23:

Summary: Oddy and Penny make up.

Commentary: Penelope is disbelieving and tests Odysseus. I like to think she mostly thinks it's him and is just fucking with him, since that's the kind of relationship they have. Athena pauses the dawn to give them more time to reunite, which must have terrified everyone else. 

Book 24:

Summary: Suitors in the underworld, Oddy trolls his dad, almost another fight.

Commentary: Homer really likes writing these underworld-talking-to-ghost-scenes. For some reason, Odysseus thinks it's essential to tease and test his father, rather than just kissing him and telling him the story. If I was lost from my dad for 20 years, I would not torture him by pretending to be someone else and talking about how I was dead. Odysseus is truly a jerk. 

He almost gets in another fight over his treatment of the suitors, but the poem ends with Athena stopping it. He'd be so screwed without her.

And that's it for The Odyssey. Probably one more post soonish as a general wrap up, but glad I made it to the end.