For these choices, and my interest in all things classically Greek, we have to thank a certain nun named Sister Mary Faith Dargan, OP. Sr. Mary Faith, the classics professor at Albertus Magnus College, taught me most everything I know about all those great characters from Greek tragedy. So when I saw two modern interpretations of those characters - specifically, of Penelope, the long-suffering and ever-faithful wife of Odysseus, and of Patrocles, the long-suffering and ever-faithful best friend of Achilles - I was right there.
The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus
AUTHOR: Margaret Atwood
PUBLISHED: 2005
GENRE: Interpretative Fiction
For those not familiar with Penelope's story as told in The Odyssey, it goes a little something like this: while husband Odysseus, after 10 years fighting at Troy, struggles for another 10 years to get back to Ithaca, Penelope struggles to run the kingdom and fend off the hundred suitors that have set up shop in her dining room and refuse to leave until she agrees to marry one of them. It has, after all, been 20 years, and while every once in a while a report comes back about Odysseus blinding a cyclops or shacking up with a minor goddess, conventional wisdom says he's dead. To put the suitors off, Penelope tells them she must first weave a burial shroud for her father-in-law.* Only then can she consider remarriage. Each night, though, she and her maids undo what has been done that day, and the shroud is never finished. She is eventually figured out, and it is only Odysseus's reappearance and his slaughter of the suitors that saves the day.
That's the short form of it, but in reality, there isn't all that much more to go on for poor faithful Penelope. Atwood fills in the gaps left by the classical narrative: Penelope's birth to a minor king and a water nymph (because really, who wasn't the daughter of a minor king and a water nymph back then); her marriage to Odysseus, which is quickly overshadowed by that of her cousin, Helen (yes, that Helen, the one who started the war); her first years in Ithaca, a rocky, goat-covered island where she is iced out by her mother-in-law and bossed around by her husband's wet nurse. More importantly, Atwood fleshes out Penelope herself, so often held up as a paragon of wifely goodness without any personality to accompany it. Atwood's Penelope is afraid at times, cunning at others, and far more active in her own life than one would expect. She's a very interesting soul.
Which is where the whole thing kind of falls apart.
With the soul, that is.
The story is told from Penelope's perspective - dead Penelope's perspective. It's all very casual, all very well, I'm just wandering around Hades, so I might as well fill you in. She runs into other souls too - Helen, who, despite not having a body, is still flirting with every male in earshot; Odysseus, who keeps running off to get reincarnated; even the suitors, who are still douchebags. Not only that, she appears to be moving through time, so that she randomly returns to earth through seances and Ouija boards and mediums, which is how she learns of computers and televisions and George Bush. It's all horridly distracting.
Not as distracting, however, as the maids.
Which brings us to the other half of this story.
There is a brief passage in The Odyssey, after the slaughter of the suitors, where Odysseus commands his son to find the maids who have been disloyal and kill them. These twelve maids - unnamed and unmourned - are hung for their insolence. The original text says nothing more. The Penelopiad offers up the explanation that their disloyalty came at the direction of Penelope, who has been using them as spies, and that she is heartbroken at their deaths. And if it had ended there - if Atwood had left the story to Penelope - it would have been a much better read.
Instead, she alternates Penelope and the maids, who act in unison in the most bizarre combination of methods. First, they act as a traditional Greek chorus; then, sing some songs**; perform a short drama and give an anthropological lecture. Next, they give us a chapter entitled, "The Trial of Odysseus, as Videotaped by the Maids", before singing another love song and turning into owls.
All of which is supposed to invoke sympathy for the maids but really just makes the reader go, huh, and when are we getting back to Penelope, at the same time.
Which is a long way of saying: when you are dealing with source material as classic and as interesting as The Odyssey, free-form isn't really the way to go. Focus on your characters and filling in the gaps, and don't get cutesy.
Which leads us to...
The Song of Achilles
AUTHOR: Madeline Miller
PUBLISHED: 2012
GENRE: Interpretative Fiction
Now, this is how you do interpretative fiction.
For those of you not familiar with this story, or rather, with The Iliad: contrary to popular belief, The Iliad is not really the story of the Trojan War. When it begins, the war has already been raging for 9 years. The Iliad is the story of what happens when you take a war prize away from Achilles. Hint: he gets super pissed. He also refuses to fight, and the Greeks begin to lose. To stem the bleeding, Achilles' best friend, Patrocles, puts on Achilles' armor and leads his troops against Hector, greatest of the Trojan warriors. Patrocles, predictably, is killed, but it's enough to get Achilles back in the fight and Hector dead.***
The Song of Achilles is the back story behind Achilles and Patrocles, and explains why Patrocles would don his best friend's armor. Achilles and Patrocles are a prime example of the Greek norm of an acceptable form of homosexuality, a trait the source material considers very lightly. Miller develops this idea into a story that is authentic and realistic and shockingly sweet, as the two young men struggle with their love for each other and the knowledge that their deaths would come early and painfully. I was always fond of Patrocles, who nobly sacrifices himself to save the Greeks, but found Achilles, supposedly a great hero, to be a brat and a whiner, sulking in his tent while his countrymen died. Miller's interpretation changed that, not by emphasizing Achilles' heroics but his relationship with Patrocles and his fellow Greeks.
Like Atwood, Miller builds off of other original material to construct a childhood for her characters - Patrocles is exiled to Achilles' father's kingdom after accidentally killing another boy - that follows through Achilles' time with the centaur Chiron and into the war. Unlike Atwood, Miller keeps her focus and her tone and builds a beautiful, believeable story that honors the original material rather than muddies it. Miller uses her source material wisely, incorporating it in such a way that it doesn't really matter if you're familiar with The Iliad or not. Her writing is enough to make you love the characters, even without the benefit of 2,500 years of scholarship.
LENGTH:
The Penelopiad: 196 pages
The Song of Achilles: 369 pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: For either, not unless you're a classics major.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?:
The Penelopiad: Not unless you're a classics major. And even then, her convoluted set-up may very well turn you off, despite the fascinating parts about Penelope herself.
The Song of Achilles: Yes, even if you're not a classics major, even if you're never read The Iliad. If you have read it, all the better. But you don't need a classical education to recognize the beauty of Miller's tale.
*Poor Laertes is alive and well, mind you. And people wonder why he runs away to be a pig herder. I'd be paranoid, too.
**And not just any songs: a sea shanty, a ballad, and a pop song that shares lyrics with a song by those other great poets, the Eagles.
***And if that synopsis doesn't get me hired by Cliff's Notes I don't know what will.
