A blog of my running thoughts while reading. *Warning: Spoilers*
That was an awful lot of godly intervention. I think I like Ulysses story better without the direct intervention of the gods. It’s so much more interesting and impressive a story when it’s just his strength and wisdom that gets him through, rather than Minerva’s magical help! Oh well.
It’s been a long time since I read The Odyssey. I remember all the stuff about Penelope and her suitors and the weaving and unweaving of the tapestry, but I have no memory at all of Telemachus going off to find his father and hearing the king’s story and returning home again. I’m sure something of the kind is in there, given that Hawthorne is retelling it, but I have no memory of it at all!
That was the most abbreviated and unusual telling of the Trojan War story I think I’ve ever heard! It was just so patchy and odd! It had the bit about the apple, but not all of it, the part about Achilles being dipped by the heel and some stuff about Hercules’ magic arrows. Weird combination, huh?
Ok, why is it that when Jupiter sets it up so that Pandora must open the box, she gets the blame but when Minerva tells Ulysses point for point what to do to defeat the Trojans, Ulysses gets the credit? Sexism much? If I were Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, I’d be a little peeved at being forgotten, especially when Ulysses is being so heaped with praise for my cunning plan! It’s totally unfair!
The strange conglomeration of sea stories was really just odd. Many of them worked well together, but others seemed out of place. And why the statement at the end about Ulysses? We’ve already met him, first of all, and besides, at least one of the sea myths he did tell was from the Odyssey anyway. So what’s up with that? Was he just temporarily tired of sea myths or something? Very strange indeed!
The Pandora myth was told pretty well, but I never liked that myth. I just hate what it says about women. Women were created as a spiteful gift, meant to punish men. Pandora is allowed no thoughts or feelings of her own at all, even her curiosity is predetermined and imposed on her. She is certainly not “all-endowed” in any meaningful way for her. And then, of course, it is woman’s fault everything bad in the world exists. Never is it blamed on the vindictive gods who set up the situation, knowing full well what would happen.
I have similar objections to the Garden of Eden story.
The twelve labors of Hercules makes a great story, but I’m unclear why parts were glossed over and one part must be saved for another chapter! I was a bit confused by the beginning, though. It described the incident with the snakes in the cradle. It also described Hercules with human parents. Where did the father come from? Wasn’t Hercules a demigod-son of a mortal woman and Zeus? There should be no father in the picture! What’s up with that?
Why was the second half of Perseus’s tale split into two parts? It was confusing and weird that Hawthorne decided to do it that way. He told the story tolerably well, but splitting it in half made things like the prophecy very confusing. I wasn’t sure what the point of his having done that was. His storytelling is frustrating me!
That was a sad story. Hawthorne tells many stories about Venus and her work, but he doesn’t seem to want his readers to be altogether fond of her. He describes her as being beautiful and traveling lavishly, but he only seems to tell stories about her where she appears vindictive or clueless or something. What’s his problem with Venus?
Hawthorne told both of the King Midas myths together in one story. They connected pretty well, but it didn’t make for a unified story in feeling at all. I’m really not sure why Hawthorne set up this book the way he did. The first couple of stories are each extremely long and make up more than half the length (probably close to three-fourths) and then there are a bunch of very short random stories after that. It’s extremely odd!