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 book from the ancient history. It uses various writing devices such as simile, an epithet, and others. Imitating it was challenging as it was 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 in creating the poem on Titanic. Although the story of Titanic and Odyssey differ from each other thematically, I tried to imitate the style of Odyssey as I understood it. Additionally, the paper has incorporated simile and epithet to bring it closer to Homeric style but the dactylic hexameter is challenging to rewrite the movie Titanic.
Titanic is a romantic movie with several characters and a hero as in Odyssey but the experiences and storyline were very different due to which it was difficult to rewrite the epic story out of Titanic. As the two had a different genre, I struggled with it. The Titanic was a love story but Odyssey was a story of deceit. However, the difference in the type of the stories was not a problem. The problem was to write like Homer and to imitate his style.
Another reason for struggling was due to the style dactylic hexameter as it was a new style to imitate. As in dactylic hexameter, the first syllable is stressed succeeding by two syllables without stress. It confused me the most to create such a 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 problem in creating the style of poem. Moreover, I never considered myself as a poetic person creating and imitating of the poem become challenging. It might be seen in the poem that I have written but lack of understanding of the poetry and the form did not make it a bad experience. I enjoyed 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 simile 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 be creating the effect to create the story and provide a clear sense of the events. Therefore, creating Homer’s simile was quite difficult but a love story that I had chosen made it easy to focus on the simile instead of 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 simile 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 the 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 epithet in the book and it was easy to use it for my own paper. Here are some of the examples of the epithet 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 reason was I had to follow Homeric style for 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 the 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.
