Hi, I'm John Green, welcome to Crash Course
Literature!
You can tell I'm an English teacher because
I'm wearing a sweater, but you tell I'm the
kind of English teacher who wants to be your
friend because I'm wearing awesome sneakers.
This is actually season two of Crash Course
Literature. If you want to watch season one,
you can do so over here. It's season four
of Crash Course Humanities, it might even
be like, season seven or eight if you count
all the science stuff. Whatever let's just
get started!
(INTRO)
We're going to start at the beginning of literature,
or, at least, a beginning of literature. Sing
in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of a man who lets all his shipmates die, lies
to everyone he meets, cheats on his wife with
assorted nymphs, and takes ten years to complete
a voyage that, according to Google Maps, should
have taken two weeks. That man is, of course,
one of the great heroes of the ancient world.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Odysseus, star
of Homer’s The Odyssey. Did I just say the
odd at sea? That’s a good pun. Not in the
original Greek though.
Now everyone knows that you can’t properly
enjoy a book until you know a lot about its
author, so before we discuss The Odyssey,
we’re going to begin with a biographical
sketch of Homer, the legendary blind poet
of ancient Greece. What’s that? Apparently
we know nothing about him. Well, in fact we
know that whoever wrote them didn’t actually
write them, because they were composed orally.
And was Homer even blind? Well, there are
some verses about blindness in the Homeric
Hymns and there’s a blind bard who appears
in The Odyssey, but if authors only wrote
about characters who were like themselves,
then James Joyce’s characters would have
all had one eye, and I would be an astonishingly
handsome seventeen-year-old.
As for the subject of Homer’s poems, archeological
evidence tells us that the Trojan War occurred
around the twelfth century BCE, although it
probably included far fewer gods and similes
than in the epics based on it. Then again,
maybe not; it’s not like we have pictures.
Anyway, Homer composed The Iliad and The Odyssey
in the eighth century BCE, so centuries after
the events it describes. And then no one bothered
to write them down for another two hundred
years, which means that they probably changed
a lot as they were passed down via the oral
tradition, and even today there are arguments
about which parts are original and which parts
are additions.
There were a lot of competing poems about
the Trojan War, but Homer’s were by far
the most famous, and they are now the most
famous because they were also the only ones
to survive the burning of the Library at Alexandria.
So The Iliad and The Odyssey are epic poems,
and we define an epic as “a long narrative
poem; on a serious subject; written in a grand
or elevated style; centered on a larger-than-life
hero.” By the way, that was an example of
dactylic hexameter, just like you see in epic
poems.
So the events of The Odyssey take place after
those of The Iliad, so let’s have a brief
recap Thought Bubble. So Helen, the wife of
Menelaus, runs off with Paris, a Trojan prince;
or maybe she’s abducted, it’s not clear.
Anyway, Menelaus’s brother Agamemnon gathers
allies and goes to Troy to get her, back but
the war drags on for ten years, at which point
everyone is really tired and bored and wants
to go home, until things suddenly get pretty
tense because Agamemnon seizes a concubine
of Achilles’ and Achilles gets really angry
and says he won’t fight anymore. And things
go really badly for the Greeks until Patroclus
- Achilles’ best friend and maybe also lover,
it’s not clear - goes into battle in his
place and does a pretty awesome job until
he’s slain by Hector, the Trojans’ great
warrior. Which forces Achilles to reconcile
himself with his own mortality and return
to the field where he becomes the ultimate
death-dealing machine, slaying hordes of Trojans
including Hector, whose body he drags behind
his chariot because that’s how Achilles
rolls, until Hector’s father, Priam, comes
and begs for his son’s corpse and Achilles
relents and they have dinner together, and
then the book ends with the war still going
on and nothing really resolved.
And that’s The Iliad. When The Odyssey opens,
it’s ten years later, and everyone is already
back home except for Odysseus. His son Telemachus
and his wife Penelope don’t know if he’s
dead or alive, but Homer reveals that he’s
on the Isle of Ogygia, imprisoned by the nymph
Calypso, who’s so hot for Odysseus even
though he spends his days laying on the beach
and crying that she won’t let him go. But
finally the gods intervene and after a series
of adventures and a whole lot of backstory
he finally returns home to Ithaca in disguise
and kills several dozen suitors who have been
drinking all of his wine, eating his beeves,
annoying his wife and plotting to kill his
son. And it seems like a cycle of violence
is just going to continue on, probably forever,
until the goddess Athena who loves Odysseus
intervenes and restores peace. The end.
Thanks, Thought Bubble. So, some of the big
questions around The Odyssey are Odysseus’
heroic characteristics, the epic’s double
standard for women, and whether you can ever
actually stop a cycle of violence. Odysseus
hardly appears in The Iliad and he’s not
a particularly great fighter; in fact, he’s
a pretty sleazy guy. He leads a night raid
into the enemy camp and kills a bunch of sleeping
Trojans. That’s not particularly glorious.
But it is typical of Odysseus, who will pretty
much do whatever it takes to survive. I mean,
his distinguishing quality is metis, which
means skill, or cunning. Odysseus is smart;
he’s really smart. I mean, he’s an incredibly
persuasive speaker and he can talk his way
out of the stickiest of situations, even ones
that involve, like, Cyclopses. He’s also
kind of a monster of self-interest, and if
he weren’t so smug and overconfident he
might have gotten home in less than, you know,
like, a gajllion years.
The best example of this is probably Odysseus’
encounter with the Cyclops. So Odysseus and
his men land on the island of the Cyclops,
and he and several of his guys settle into
the Cyclops’ cave, feasting on the delicious
goat cheese that the Cyclops has hoarded,
and then, expecting the Cyclops to return
and offer them gifts, because that’s what
you do when someone breaks into your house.
I mean yes, there was an ancient Greek tradition
of hospitality, but that’s taking it pretty
far; and for the record, it’s also pretty
much exactly what the suitors are doing in
Odysseus’ house, for which he kills them.
So the Cyclops comes home and he’s so thoroughly
not psyched about these guys in his cave that
he begins to eat them, and in response Odysseus
gets the Cyclops drunk and then blinds him
with a flaming spear, which is fairly easy
to do because of course he only has one eye.
Odysseus has given his name as Noman, so when
the Cyclops cries out “No man is hurting
me! No man is killing me!” the other Cyclopes
don’t come to his aide, because you know
they think there’s no man hurting him. It’s
a pun. It’s a blindingly good pun. But then
when it seems like Odysseus might get away
with it, he can’t tolerate the idea that
“no man” is going to get the credit so
he announces his actual name, causing the
Cyclops to call down curses on him, which
culminates in all of his men being killed.
Just as a rule of thumb, you do not want to
be friends with Odysseus, and you also don’t
want to be his enemy. Just stay away.
So Odysseus is a trickster and a liar and
a pirate and a serial adulterer, and he’s
responsible for the death of a lot of people,
and he also has probably the worst sense of
direction in all of Greek literature. But
is he a hero? Yes. To the Greeks, heroism
didn’t mean perfection, it meant that you
had an extraordinary attribute or ability,
and Odysseus definitely does. It’s not for
nothing that he’s the favorite of Athena,
the goddess of wisdom. I mean, she applauds
all of his tricks and stratagems, and she
encourages us to applaud them too, even though
from our contemporary perspective, he’s
a pretty shady dude.
Speaking of contemporary perspective, one
of Odysseus’ least stellar qualities is
his attitude toward women. He’s really big
on this sexual double standard in which the
exact same behavior types women as sluts and
men as studs. Actually the whole epic in general
is incredibly—wait, why is my desk moving?
Oh, the secret compartment is open. It must
be time for the open letter. What have we
got today? Well, it’s Medusa, a representation
of woman as a monstrous serpent.
An open letter to the patriarchy: how are
you so incredibly resilient? Also, please
explain something to me. How is it that the
only way for someone to become like a good
heroic strong man is to have sex with lots
of women, but if a woman has sex with lots
of men, she’s like tainted and impure and
horrible? Patriarchy, I don’t want to get
too deeply into math but in order for men
to have sex with a lot of women, a lot of
women have to have sex with men. That’s
it, that’s the only way, patriarchy! So
basically you’re saying that the only way
for men to achieve manliness is for women
to fail at womanliness! It’s bad! Actually,
it’s evil! I hate you! Best wishes, John
Green.
Yeah, so the whole epic is incredibly paranoid
about female sexuality. I mean the story that
haunts The Odyssey is that of Agamemnon, the
leader of the Achaeans, who returns victorious
from the war, only to be murdered by his wife
and her lover. And then when they meet in
the underworld, Agamemnon’s ghost warns
Odysseus that he better come home in secret
because Penelope might try and have him killed
too. And the misogyny doesn’t end there;
I mean this is a book full of monsters, and,
Cyclops aside, a lot of them are female; like
the Sirens who lure men too their deaths,
or Scylla, who’s basically an octopus with
teeth. Then of course there’s Charybdis,
a hole that sucks men to their doom. You can
explore the Freudian implications of that
one over at Crash Course Psychology.
Meanwhile Odysseus sleeps with like every
manner of magical lady and nearly marries
an island princess, but he assures us that
he was always true to his wife “in his heart.”
Which is nice, but it would be even nicer
if he were true to his wife in his pants.
Stan, who is ever the stickler for historical
accuracy, would like me to acknowledge that
Odysseus didn’t wear pants because they
weren’t a thing in Greece yet, so he wasn’t
true to his wife in like his toga or his loincloth
or whatever.
Anyway, even as he’s sleeping around, Odysseus
is incredibly concerned with whether or not
Penelope is chaste. If she isn’t, he’ll
likely kill her. After all, he later executes
all the housemaids for sleeping with the suitors,
and he’s not even married to them. The epic
seems like it’s building to a climactic
scene wherein Odysseus is going to test Penelope’s
faithfulness, but instead it’s Penelope
who tests Odysseus. When he reveals himself
to her, she doesn’t recognize him. She forces
him to prove himself by speaking the secret
of their marriage bed, and only then does
she embrace him in one of the most beautiful
lines in all of Homer: “And so she too rejoiced,
her gaze upon her husband, her white arms
round him pressed as though forever.”
Some ancient commentators believed the poem
should end right there like any good romance
would, with Odysseus and Penelope blissfully
reunited, but it doesn’t. See Odysseus and
a couple of his friends, with a big assist
from Athena, have slaughtered all the suitors
and the serving maids, and that’s a problem,
because this isn’t The Iliad. They aren’t
at war. The Iliad is a poem of war, and it’s
main concern is kleos, which means glory or
renown achieved on the battlefield that guarantees
you a kind of immortality because your deeds
are so amazing that everyone’s going to
sing about you forever. Achilles didn’t
get to go home. He had two choices: he could
stay and fight and win glory, or he could
go home and live a long and quiet life. In
The Iliad, Achilles went for glory. But The
Odyssey is about the alternative. It’s about
what we do after a war, how we put war away.
Odysseus isn’t particularly good at this.
He’s sort of an ancient example of Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder. He’s been through
so much that he doesn’t know how to adjust
to peacetime; his response to young men taking
over his dining hall and barbecuing all of
his pigs is mass slaughter. And the slaughter
of the suitors leads to their relatives coming
to try to slaughter Odysseus, and if Athena
hadn’t descended from Olympus, conveniently,
and put a stop to it, pretty soon there would
have been no one left on Ithaca alive. And
that’s a sobering final thought: if it weren’t
for divine intervention, the humans in this
story might have continued that cycle of violence
forever. The Odyssey is a poem set in peacetime,
but it reminds us that humans have never been
particularly good at leaving war behind them.
Next week we’ll be discussing another story
with lots of sex and violence and Greeks:
Oedipus. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you
then.
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