Walcott's Odyssey

From the beginning, Walcott's Odyssey is a complete departure from the Homeric Odyssey. Starting with the narrator, blind Billy Blue who represents the blind bard Homer, we see that this play is a parody. Homer invokes the muse in the beginning. Billy Blue says he is telling us the story because we like to hear such stories. This says a lot. For one thing, entertainment value is the primary reason why people watch plays. The contemporary speech makes the play altogether more interesting to watch. Our familiarity with the plot as a classic makes it humorous.

It seemed as though Walcott made it a point to present everything as the opposite of how Homer presents it. Homer starts with the story of Telemachus. Walcott starts with Troy. He gives us a glimpse of the hero, Odysseus, first. Odysseus is not the valiant and amazing hero we see in the Homeric Odyssey. He is rather warlike and we see his internal conflict right away through the use of Thersites as a foil.

Moving on, we see Walcott's characterization of women; Penelope is more assertive, Circe's sexuality is played up to an extreme and Nausika's character is put in an entirely new perspective. In the Odyssey, we don't see much of Nausika. She is the pure and completely restrained daughter of King Alcinous. Walcott shows us a lot more of her character. She's a typical teenager caught in between childhood and adulthood. She is extremely flirtacious and constantly wants to talk about sex. Clearly, she's not getting any. This brings us back to the Homeric theme of growing up which was only seen in Telemachus. Here, Nausika parallels Telemachus's story of growing up. He is desperately trying to make the transition into manhood while she is desperately trying to make the transition into womanhood. Here, Arete is not present. In Telemachus's life, Odysseus is not present. This has a tremendous impact on how these two characters mature into adults.

What I found to be most intriguing about Walcott's play is his rendition of the underworld scene. Walcott's surreal choice of setting is most important in this scene. Earlier, the Cyclops scene was set on a "long, grey, empty wharf" and Odysseus and his men randomly encountered a philosopher who said some very strange things to them. Now, the underworld is set in the underground and there is a random machine with a mirror. His mother, Anticlea, is dressed in a coat, hat, and scarf. This is all very strange. Also, Odysseus does not encounter all of the other characters such as Agamemnon and Achilles.

But why the underground? Yes, it is under, but it is also a place of transportation. Anticlea says, "You never get off. The train goes on forever." This is a different perspective on death. In Homer's Odyssey, death is presented as static condition. The dead are in one place, oblivious of their surrounding and suffering. Here, they are oblivious, but moving constantly on a train going nowhere. This nonetheless comes back to Homer, but from a different direction, as it all amounts to not going anywhere in the end. Anticlea cannot see her reflection in the mirror. She is gone from the real world and is underneath. We can envision a train, going on endlessly in a dark tunnel.

In Walcott's Odyssey, we clearly see the emotion better. We don't have to search for it in metaphors. This differentiates drama from poetry. Drama can be altogether more enjoyable and entertaining, as the characteristics and emotions are expressed entirely in dialogue. We also note that Walcott is, in many ways, poking fun at the Odyssey. It's like taking a classic down from its pedestal and placing it within the sphere of our tangible world. Parodies thrive on humor. This reminded me of one of my favorite parodies: the movie, 10 Things I Hate About You, which is a parody of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Parodies just go to show how a drastic change in setting and language can entirely change the the interpretation and the tone of a literary work.