Reflection
The book of Odyssey is the epic story by Homer. It is an ancient poem written in dactylic hexameter. The poem is not easy to understand as it tells many stories. The Odyssey is an epic hero who struggles to achieve his goals using his intelligence. He fights in the wars and for the family, assisted by gods. It is considered one of the important books from ancient history. It uses various writing devices such as simile, an epithet, and others. Imitating it was challenging as it was a dactylic hexameter. Moreover, I chose the film Titanic to create the poem, which created some problems but helped as well. I chose the movie because of my familiarity with the movie, but I was reading Odyssey for the first time. It was difficult to comprehend, but I tried to imitate the Odyssey’s style when creating the poem on Titanic. Although the stories of Titanic and the Odyssey differ from each other thematically, I tried to imitate the style of the Odyssey as I understood it. Additionally, the paper has incorporated similes and epithets to bring it closer to Homeric style, but the dactylic hexameter is challenging to rewrite in the movie Titanic.
Titanic is a romantic movie with several characters and a h,ero as in Odyssey, but the experiences and storyline were very different, due to which it was difficult to rewrite the epic story Titanic. As the two had a different genre, I struggled with it. The Titanic was a love story, but the Odyssey was a story of deceit. However, the difference in the type of the stories was not a problem. The problem was writing like Homer and imitating his style.
Another reason for the struggle was the dactylic hexameter style, which was a new style to imitate. As in the dactylic hexameter, the first syllable is stressed, followed by two syllables without stress. It confused me the most to create such rhythmic poetry. I struggled to create the dactylic hexameter. The poem seemed a narration and I could not discern how dactylic hexameter was different from a simple narration. I had difficulty understanding the form of the poem and hence had a problem in creating the style of the poem. Moreover, I never considered myself a poetic person, so creating and imitating a poem becomes challenging. It might be seen in the poem that I have written, but my lack of understanding of the poetry and its form did not make it a bad experience. I enjoyed it and took it as a challenge. I found myself smiling as I wrote the poem. It was a difficult but interesting assignment.
Moreover, the use of similes is frequent in the Odyssey, but it is not very visible, as the similes were not typically used. For example, it says, “But come, stay longer, keen as you are to sail” (p.12) and “as strong as the man” (p. 11). He uses frequent similes to create the genre and make the story epic. Unlike commonly used similes, Homer’s similes seem to create the effect to create the story and provide a clear sense of the events. Therefore, creating Homer’s simile was quite difficult, but the love story that I had chosen made it easy to focus on the simile instead of the more complicated literary devices that Homer uses in the Odyssey. For instance, “Demanded subjugation like the wife,” “such a wife Cal demanded Rose to be,” and “as water seeps into the ship from the pores” are examples of similes that I have used in the poem to imitate the Odyssey. In the examples, I have tried to imitate the similes that Homer uses in the Odyssey.
Moreover, the Odyssey uses an epithet as a literary device, and I think it is crucial for the narrative poem or stories to use the epithet to explain the character or the event. I found the use of frequent epithets in the book, and it was easy to use it for my own paper. Here are some of the examples of the epithets from the book, the Odyssey, “the unendurable song,” the unforgettable grief,” “a great man whose name resounds through the Hellas,” “devoted bard” (p.13), and the “bright-eyed goddess.” In the poem Titanic, “sharp and strong iceberg,” “Wife who was no human,” “fair lady,” “Jack, the jolly and lively artist,” and “Jack who was poor” are the epithet that I have incorporated in my imitation of the epithet. It was one of the easier parts of the assignment, as I did not have to struggle to imitate Homer. His epithets were simple and easy to grasp throughout the book, the Odyssey.
To conclude, the assignment was very challenging for many reasons. One of the main reasons was that I had to follow the Homeric style when writing the poem. The dactylic hexameter was a complicated style to follow, and it was my first encounter with the Odyssey and this style. However, other parts of the assignment, such as using literary devices to write the poem, were comparatively easy. Nonetheless, the Homeric style complicated the use of simile as he had used it differently. It was not similar to the contemporary use of the style. Therefore, it was challenging. Lastly, the least challenging task in the assignment was to use the literary device epithet. Regardless of the difficulty of the assignment, I enjoyed the assignment as I was challenged to do something that was not routine.
Works Cited
Fagles, Robert. The Odyssey. Penguin, 1997.
