Dangerous Women? Catharsis?

By now, I've come to the conclusion that Jonathan Shay's PHD/MD drivel is pretty much shit and the only reason I still have things to say about it is because it's so bad. I was completely stunned (in a bad way) by the essay (for that is what it ultimately is) when I got up to the chapter called, "Witches, Goddesses, Queens, Wives--Dangerous Women." Whatever we know of literature comes from perspective. Shay's perspective, as far as I comprehended it at least, is that the Odyssey presents women as dangerous and untrustworthy. Oh. That's one interpretation but to be convincing, Shay would have to argue against the countless ways in which women are presented as strong, powerful, and supportive towards men. Having read the Odyssey I think differently and I get so distracted by how much I disagree with Shay's interpretation due to his lack of convincingness that I forget that the point of the essay is to talk about the Vietnam veterans. There we go. The extended Odyssey allusion/reference fails.

It continues to fail throughout. Sure, I like the idea of Shay's book but the way he wrote it makes me side with a good friend of mine who said, "The only thing worse than war is a book about war." A person who hasn't read the Odyssey will be able to concentrate only on the information about the veterans. A person who has read the Odyssey will become totally distracted like I did. I became more interested in Shay's interpretation of the Odyssey, as opposed to its connection with the war veterans. But wait, that's because the connection becomes increasingly stupid and relentlessly pointless as the essay goes on (and on and on).

There are several reasons why I am bitter. For one thing, large paragraphs are dedicated Shay's retelling of the Odyssey. I have tremendous respect for anyone who has the patience to fill 253 pages, even if it is 253 pages full of bullshit. It takes a tremendous amount of time, effort, and dedication. But I'm not saying Shay has written bullshit; Shay has simply written a decent essay that does not work for many reasons. First of all, I do not need to read a summary of a book I've already read. But that's just me. Now, here's what I gathered from this chapter: Dangerous women and whores, and sex with prostitutes renders army veterans distrustful of and dissatisfied with their wives. Not being a psychologist, I can't ever know if that's a logical argument. But maybe that's the problem with this book--maybe it only reaches out to policymakers and psychologists?

When I read the Odyssey, I thought that women were presented as powerful. Nausicaa habitually handed Odysseus over to "toughs who habitually kill strangers?" Euryclea is the kind of woman who "can accidentally get you killed by seeing through your disguise?"
Oh, now that I think about it, this is a great excerpt and I must quote it in its entirety:

"Turning back to Odysseus as a veteran (rather than as a military leader), the Odyssey shows how dangerous a woman may be to returning veterans: she can trick you onto a fragile sea raft from the safety of dry land and then drown you (Calypso), she can betray you to assassins who lie in wait for you (Clytemnestra and--who knows?--maybe Penelope), she can see through and betray your disguise, getting you killed (Helen's chance to blow Odysseus's disguise to the Trojans), she can accidentally get you killed by seeing through your disguise (Odysseus's old childhood nurse, Eurycleia), she can hand you over to toughs who habitually kill strangers (Nausicaa), she can turn you into a caged pig eating acorns or castrate you in her bed (Circe), she can fill you with such obsession that you forget to eat and starve to death (Sirens), she can literally eat men alive (Scylla). [Oh look, the sentence finally ended]. She may have gotten you and your friends into the war to begin with, where most of them were killed (Helen)."

These two sentences were slightly more difficult to type than they were to read. Shay's writing style makes me not want to read this book. Furthermore, I can't help but feel that Shay's interpretation presents women in a worse way than Homer does. True, Clytemnestra ruthlessly kills her husband and this makes us wonder whether Penelope will do the same--or rather, it makes Odysseus wonder. But what about Penelope as the loyal wife? What about Penelope as Odysseus's equal who actually does understand Odysseus when he returns? What about Penelope's own compromise? After all, she takes back a man who has been sleeping around with countless women for over ten years. Also, what about the fact that if it were not for Nausicaa "handing Odysseus over" to her people, he would still be wandering perhaps.

But I still get where Shay is trying to go with this. He's trying to say that this is a misconception men have of their wives when they return. But so what? What if veterans have this misconception? What do we do about it? How do we stop veterans from beating up their wives? How do we prevent them from feeling lonely because they longer can have sex with whores in Vietnam? How do we cure their fear of the dangerous prostitutes they had sex with in Vietnam? I perused this chapter, but could not place my finger on a spot where Shay offers a solution to this problem.

Here's what Emerson says:

"Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason."

We can't help PTSD. Yes, it hurts character. Yes, it's wrong for veterans to have to go through this. But what can we do? We can be nicer and that will make things easier but it won't solve the problem. And contrary to what Emerson says, the veterans have had so many "electric shocks" that they've been put out of communication with their own reason.

I wish this book offered a solution. But maybe it proves that there is no solution. So everyone should attend to their own work, skim Shay's 253 page essay (which could have saved a lot of paper if it were shortened by even 100 pages), be nice to veterans and respect them for their tremendous sacrifice to our country, and "already the evil begins to be repaired."

To conclude, if I was trying to make the point that Shay's book ultimately serves no purpose, then this blog entry in many ways serves no purpose, for it is just as incohesive as this chapter and countless other chapters which I've given myself the pain of only skimming. But I do like the letter "A" a whole lot, especially the way it appears on Solar. It will be a nice contrast to the "C" I will get in Calculus.