What makes an Odyssey? I want to preface this with this…
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What makes an Odyssey?
I want to preface this with this statement- I consider myself to be of below average literary knowledge. I approach this with an air of reverence, I do not mean to imply that the Odyssey does not deserve the flowers it has accumulated in 3,000 years. Admittedly, I have not read it. But I saw a tweet (It was a bleak post by an engagement-farming blue check account, of which I would typically ignore) and it read, “Greece has the Iliad and the Odyssey. Romans have The Aeneid. America has…?” Included was a picture of Captain Ahab beholding a massive Moby Dick.
Now, I lied. I \*do\* have a rudimentary understanding of what an “Odyssey” is. It’s a long adventure in which a protagonist has one or many challenges to overcome. My question is, doesn’t that make a great many pieces (if not most) of literature odysseys? Does this not just follow a typical plot? Rising action, climax, falling action, with the added stipulation that it MUST have a literal journey, from point A to B? Is the reasoning for the adventure not just the rising action, the challenges faced being the climax, and the arrival to Point B being the falling action?
The tweet implied that *Moby Dick* is an odyssey. Which, based of the criteria I’ve listed, does fit the mould for an odyssey. And there’s literature of which the fact that they are odysseys is common knowledge, like *Ulysses*. But the replies mentioned some pieces of literature that puzzled me. For instance, one mentioned *Star Wars*. Which, as an avid Star Wars fan, does begin to make sense based on my criteria, even though I’d never considered it an odyssey before.
My questions, summarized-
1.) Outside of the criteria I mentioned, what makes a story an Odyssey?
2.) What makes the Odyssey so special that the basic framework for literature makes a story an odyssey?
3.) Let’s get odd- What other unsuspecting stories are, by definition, odysseys? Ones that you wouldn’t think of as odysseys?
#entertainment
source
I want to preface this with this statement- I consider myself to be of below average literary knowledge. I approach this with an air of reverence, I do not mean to imply that the Odyssey does not deserve the flowers it has accumulated in 3,000 years. Admittedly, I have not read it. But I saw a tweet (It was a bleak post by an engagement-farming blue check account, of which I would typically ignore) and it read, “Greece has the Iliad and the Odyssey. Romans have The Aeneid. America has…?” Included was a picture of Captain Ahab beholding a massive Moby Dick.
Now, I lied. I \*do\* have a rudimentary understanding of what an “Odyssey” is. It’s a long adventure in which a protagonist has one or many challenges to overcome. My question is, doesn’t that make a great many pieces (if not most) of literature odysseys? Does this not just follow a typical plot? Rising action, climax, falling action, with the added stipulation that it MUST have a literal journey, from point A to B? Is the reasoning for the adventure not just the rising action, the challenges faced being the climax, and the arrival to Point B being the falling action?
The tweet implied that *Moby Dick* is an odyssey. Which, based of the criteria I’ve listed, does fit the mould for an odyssey. And there’s literature of which the fact that they are odysseys is common knowledge, like *Ulysses*. But the replies mentioned some pieces of literature that puzzled me. For instance, one mentioned *Star Wars*. Which, as an avid Star Wars fan, does begin to make sense based on my criteria, even though I’d never considered it an odyssey before.
My questions, summarized-
1.) Outside of the criteria I mentioned, what makes a story an Odyssey?
2.) What makes the Odyssey so special that the basic framework for literature makes a story an odyssey?
3.) Let’s get odd- What other unsuspecting stories are, by definition, odysseys? Ones that you wouldn’t think of as odysseys?
#entertainment
source
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