Reflection
The Odyssey is an 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. Odysseus is an epic hero who struggles to achieve his goals using his intelligence. He fights in wars and for his family, assisted by gods. It is considered one of the important books from ancient history. It uses various writing devices such as similes, epithets, and others. Imitating it was challenging as it was written in 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 it, but I was reading The Odyssey for the first time. It was difficult to comprehend, but I tried to imitate the style of The Odyssey 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 the Homeric style, but the dactylic hexameter is challenging to recreate in a poem based on the movie Titanic (Homer, trans. Fagles).
Titanic is a romantic movie with several characters and a hero, as in The Odyssey, but the experiences and storyline are very different, which made it difficult to rewrite Titanic as an epic story. As the two had different genres, I struggled with it. Titanic was a love story, but The Odyssey was a story of deceit. However, the difference in the types of 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. In dactylic hexameter, the first syllable is stressed, followed by two syllables without stress. It confused me the most when creating such rhythmic poetry. I struggled to create the dactylic hexameter. The poem seemed like 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 creating its style. Moreover, I never considered myself a poetic person, so creating and imitating a poem became challenging. It might be seen in the poem that I have written, but my lack of understanding of 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 always very obvious, 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). Homer uses frequent similes to create the genre and make the story epic. Unlike commonly used similes, Homer’s similes seem to create an effect that develops the story and provides a clear sense of the events. Therefore, creating a Homeric 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 epithets as a literary device, and I think it is crucial for narrative poems or stories to use epithets to explain a character or an event. I found frequent use of epithets in the book, and it was easy to use them for my own paper. Here are some examples of the epithets from The Odyssey: “the unendurable song,” “the unforgettable grief,” “a great man whose name resounds through the Hellas,” “devoted bard” (p. 13), and “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 epithets that I have incorporated in my imitation. 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 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 device. 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 it as I was challenged to do something that was not routine.
Works Cited
Fagles, Robert. The Odyssey. Penguin, 1997.
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