i. Daisy’s voice From her first appearance, Daisy appears to be defined by her voice rather than her looks. Nick and Gatsby often talk about her voice—like the sirens from The Odyssey, it is what attracts people (especially men) to her, and affects the people around her with its power. In this sense, her voice […]

Snake, Bouquet, Rider   I see the snake and think about desire and deception. Perhaps even forbidden knowledge or an unknown force. The card is a queen of clubs, which is one of intuition, knowledge and mental balance. I think this contrast means something may occur in my uneventful life. Maybe this is my high […]

“Handmaids” are essentially female servants. In the world of Gilead, their only purpose is to be impregnated by Commanders and give them children—they are “two-legged wombs” (chap. 23). While I haven’t finished the book, I think it’s safe to say the central conflict of The Handmaid’s Tale is Offred’s struggle to hold onto her sense […]

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer (1816)  BY JOHN KEATS Keats’ poem, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is essentially a love poem about Chapman’s translation of Homer’s “The Odyssey”. Through his poem, Keats shows his great appreciation for poetry and illustrates the beauty of finding a poem that significantly moves a reader. Keats follows […]

From The Penelopiad (2006) by Margaret Atwood   A Low Art The explicit conflict of this prose is Penelope’s exasperation towards Odysseus “getting away with everything” while she was alive. It is a monologue of her reflection and regrets towards not letting herself discover Odysseus’ true self—“his slipperiness, his wiliness, his foxiness”—due to the constraints of […]

Odysseus definitely isn’t a simple man. He is no one-dimensional ordinary greek human that the gods of Olympus care none about—if Athena is so interested in a human, the human must be interesting, right? One of Odysseus’ signature features of being a trickster is something that distinguishes him from other heroes. Even Athena, the goddess […]

(I’ll skip the introduction about how hard it is to choose just three great lines from a 24-book-long work of epic poetry.) a line you like because it reveals so much about the world of The Odyssey —the many turns, the echoing story, the ideas hidden inside it: “My name is Noman. My family and […]

Ithaka What do “these Itahakas” mean? What characterises the voice in this poem? A poem describing Odysseus’ journey from Ithaka and back to Ithaka—it seems to be describing a circular journey of “back to where I started”. The poem may be saying something about leaving the comforts of your home and setting out on a […]

The Odyssey may as well be Homer collecting several short stories and compiling them to make one big narrative/poem about a guy who is both lucky and unlucky, but he might also be making a point about how to live. One of the obvious ‘big themes Homer alludes to in The Odyssey is the human […]

Book 1 of The Odyssey begins with the narrator speaking briefly of the Muse. This is interesting to note, as they were “sources of inspiration” for many things. The supposedly gruelling journey of Odysseus that is about to begin starts with some… hope? It’s almost as if readers know Odysseus will face impossible hurdles but […]