Zana’s Reviews > The Odyssey > Status Update

‘Eupeithes first stood up and spoke to them. This man was inconsolable with grief for his dead son Antinous, the boy Odysseus killed first. His father wept, tears falling as he spoke. “This scheming man, my friends, has done us all most monstrous wrongs. First, he took many good men off to sail with him, and lost the ships, and killed the men! Now he has come and murdered all the best of Cephallenia...”’

The best???

Okay but why didn't he tell his wife that Circe wanted to smash and that he and his men stayed at her place for a year? 🧐

‘“Mother! Cruel, heartless Mother! Why are you doing this, rejecting Father? Why do you not go over, sit beside him, and talk to him? No woman in the world would be so obstinate! To keep your distance from him when he has come back after twenty long years of suffering! Your heart is always harder than rock!”’

You know what Telemachus? Fuck you AND fuck your dad

“Then the men took Melanthius outside and with curved bronze cut off his nose and ears and ripped away his genitals, to feed raw to the dogs. Still full of rage, they chopped his hands and feet off....”

👁️👄👁️

“At that, he wound a piece of sailor’s rope round the rotunda and round the mighty pillar, stretched up so high no foot could touch the ground... just so the girls, their heads all in a row, were strung up with the noose around their necks to make their death an agony. They gasped, feet twitching for a while, but not for long.”

Like father like son huh Telemachus 😒

‘”When the whole house is set in proper order, restore my halls to health: take out the girls between the courtyard wall and the rotunda. Hack at them with long swords, eradicate all life from them. They will forget the things the suitors made them do with them in secret, through Aphrodite.”’

I take back anything good I said about Odysseus lol

“Odysseus scanned all around his home for any man who might be still alive, who might be hiding to escape destruction. He saw them fallen, all of them, so many, lying in blood and dust, like fish hauled up out of the dark-gray sea in fine-mesh nets; tipped out upon the curving beach’s sand, they gasp for water from the salty sea....”

Talk about a simile 👁️👄👁️

‘Odysseus already had a plan. “Telemachus and I will keep the suitors trapped in the hall—however much they rage. You two, truss up his hands and feet behind him, drag him inside the storeroom, string him up, tying a knotted rope high on the column, and hoist him to the rafters. Torture him with hours of agony before he dies.”’

He would know a thing or two about death and destruction huh 😶

“He aimed his deadly arrow at Antinous. The young man sat there, just about to lift his golden goblet, swirling wine around, ready to drink.... Odysseus aimed at his throat, then shot. The point pierced all the way through his soft neck. He flopped down to the side and his cup slipped out of his hand. A double pipe of blood gushed from his nostrils.”

GET HIM

“So he had tricked them all. After examining the mighty bow carefully, inch by inch—as easily as an experienced musician stretches a sheep-gut string around a lyre’s peg and makes it fast—Odysseus, with ease, strung the great bow. He held it in his right hand and plucked the string, which sang like swallow-song, a clear sweet note.”

OH SH-