Last Thursday on
September 13, 2012 I attended the performance of “The Odyssey” by Odds
Bodkin. This performance was very
interesting and unique because it portrayed the Greek epic in a way I have
never seen before. “The Odyssey” by
Homer is an epic about a hero named Odysseus and his struggle to get back to
his family after twenty years at battle.
In “The Birthmark”
by Nathaniel Hawthorne a man name Aylmer continuously comments on the birthmark
on his wife’s face and asks why she does not want to remove it. The wife becomes offended because she is fond
of her birthmark and believes it sets her apart from other women. Many people are fond of her birthmark and
find it a unique quality, except her husband.
She agrees to have him remove it himself and he is overjoyed because he
thinks that by removing this “imperfection” his wife will ultimately be
perfect. However, in his attempts to
remove the birthmark she dies. In “The
Odyssey” Odds Bodkin speaks about how Odysseus is traveling home to his family
and how he will do anything and everything to get back to them after their long
time apart. The love Odysseus has for
his wife and son is so strong that any imperfection is overlooked because the
time apart makes everything else irrelevant.
Odds Bodkins also points out that even though the journey was long,
treacherous, and full of temptations his undying love and thoughts of his
family kept him going. Odysseus and
Aylmer are similar in the sense that they both are doing difficult things for
the ones they love the most.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by
Charlotte Perkins Gilman a very ill woman is put in a room with ugly yellow
wallpaper that she cannot stand the sight of at first. As the time goes by and the more she looks at
the wallpaper, she begins to envision a woman behind the wallpaper trying to
get out. Since she is calm and quiet her
husband believes she is becoming better.
However, she is slowly becoming insane the longer she is locked in room
alone with the wallpaper and her thoughts.
She soon becomes obsessed with the woman behind the wallpaper and in
turn becomes that woman. In the
performance by Odds Bodkins, Odysseus is traveling many miles to see his
estranged family. The events he endured
were nevertheless insane and crazy, but he encountered these things just to
return to his loved ones. Just as the
woman in the room goes insane about the woman behind the wallpaper, Odysseus
becomes insane about returning. In the scene
where Odysseus is inside the Trojan Horse, he truly begins to feel the distance
from his family and the rage of being at war for so long that he must break out
of the horse and attack the Trojans so he can return to his wife and son. The insanity in both pieces of literature are
similar because they relate to a type of obsession.
In the poem “I
Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth, the speaker emphasizes the
beauty of nature and how happy one must be in such a beautiful place. The poem and the epic relate because each
speak about a beautiful place. In “The
Odyssey” Odds Bodkin portrays Ithaca as a beautiful place with birds, trees,
and bright skies. In “I Wandered Lonely
as a Cloud” Wordsworth describes a field of daffodils that are so beautiful
that it makes the speaker overjoyed. The
description of natural beauty in each selection brings a common ground into the
mix because one speaks of nature in general and the other speaks of a long
difficult journey from a never-ending war.
In conclusion, the
variety of literary pieces relates in a strange way, but each has their own
unique style and language that allows the relationship to form. Although the connections may be hard to comprehend
or even find within the pieces, looking a little deeper into their means shows
a correlation of differences and similarities.
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