[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_34

“They still have life but have given up everything else to keep it. Sacrificing what they don't even realize they have until they lose it. Perhaps the poet does not want to learn this truth but will be forced to."

Nathalie Haynes could be referring to many things with these lines. I can think of a lot of people I know, for example, my parent’s neighbor, who seems to have sold the soul to the devil in exchange for immortality that was anything but desirable. Or even a handful of friends who have burned their humanity for their careers. Haynes speaks from a distant past and of people in Homer's time. Perhaps this is why Greek myths survive and are still popular after thousands of years: they tell us familiar stories, still so incredibly close to us that they can wake up our imagination.

When I was a child, and I was studying the Odyssey at school, the teachers told me that unlike the Iliad, in the Odyssey, there were many more women with important roles, "women who did things," in their words. This meant that the women who appeared in the Odyssey didn't just obey men, cry, and bury their children like the Trojans. I couldn't find them fascinating anyway: in one way or another, they were all under the thumb of Ulysses, which is quite degrading - not only for themselves - but also for a little girl who wants idols and characters to imitate who is solid and free from the male actions.

Therefore, it was a pleasure, even if belated, to read Heynes' text, which puts a female voice inside the inflated male gaze of the Homeric poem. With her, female characters stop being "women who do things" and become human creatures who act and shape the plot with their choices and thoughts. They make the plot real and funny.