miscellaneous iterated circles

Addie Bundren is a rather mysterious figure in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying . The first portion of the book has her sitting in the death-room not saying a word to anyone, or even looking in Anse's direction. Only at the moment of her death does she call out to Cash. The next portion of the book sees Addie dead, in the coffin (accidentally augured), and on the road. She is very dead at this point, but she still maintains a significant presence in the plot, with Anse's adamant declarations that "this is what she wanted" or the omnipresent stench that follows the cart like a blight on the land. In the paradigm of the Hero's Journey, Addie, residing in her coffin is a Talisman, but she seems to be a bad-luck charm or a harbinger of misfortune as well, given the reactions of people outside the Bundren family. After the river crossing, we get a chapter narrated by Addie herself, even though she has been dead for a week at that point. We learn that Addie Bundren is ...

In O Brother, Where Art Thou , Ulysses Everett McGill is fairly obviously intended to parallel Odysseus. In many ways, they are alike. In others, they are rather different. To me, the biggest difference between Odysseus and Ulysses is their fatal flaw. Odysseus' flaw is pride, that he must reveal his name to Polyphemus, or that his emotions get the better of him and he acts rashly. Ulysses, however, struggles with vanity instead. We can see this with his insistence on getting Dapper Dan pomade instead of Fop, or when he wakes up after the sirens, immediately worrying about his hair. It's implied that the Sheriff was able to track Everett and company because of Everett's distinctive pomade. (At the end, we see the bloodhound sniffing in Everett's massive stash of Dapper Dan). While Odysseus and Ulysses both have a way with words, in general Odysseus is better with them. Odysseus is very quick to fabricate elaborate stories (as much a storyteller as a liar), but Evere...

Odysseus lies a lot. He's a crafty man, deceptive, tactful, calculating. Since he is the only one living to tell his story, we are sometimes left wondering how much of his story is really the truth. In the court of the Phaeacians, Odysseus spends whole books just telling stuff that happened to him. The only others to witness those events were Odysseus' crew, who died. In a number of places, Odysseus portrays himself as being heroic, stronger, able to stay up for days and nights on end, just plain better than his crew. (It's always the crew that wants to stop and rest on the island, that wants to open the bag of winds, that eats the Sun God's cattle.) Yet at the same time, he also portrays himself in sometimes unflattering ways. When Eurylachus leads the rest of the crew to eating the Sun God's cattle, Odysseus gives him spoken lines and reasonable arguments. Or when Odysseus reveals his name to Polyphemus, over the protests of the crew, cursing them and dooming ...

When I was younger, I read the Belgariad  series by David Eddings. It's a five-book series that fits very well into the Hero's Journey archetype. It fits so well that it might sound cliche, but the series' conformance to the tropes and elements of the Hero's Journey is not a bad thing. The protagonist, Garion, starts off as a farm boy under the care of his Aunt Pol. The Call to Adventure first comes with a disreputable-seeming vagabond storyteller who apparently knows Aunt Pol. The three of them, and the reliable smith Durnik set out on a journey (I don't remember to where, it's been a while since I read it). They meet other companions along the way (Silk the thief/merchant/spy, Lelldorin the hotheaded and impulsive archer, Ce'nedra the beautiful but somewhat spoiled Imperial Princess, and others) as they seek out the Orb of Aldur. Along the way, it is revealed that the storyteller is in fact Belgarath the Sorcerer, a legendary figure of incredible magi...

From this point forth, this blog is now dedicated to The Hero's Journey instead of 20th Century Novel.

The protagonist of Song of Solomon  is Macon Dead (the third), often known as Milkman. His name is the same as his father's, who has the same name as his own father. For much of Macon Dead III's (abbreviated to 'MDIII') life, the names he is called (and by whom) have had significant impact on him. As Macon Dead, son of Macon Dead, son of Macon Dead, his father's name overshadows his, leaving MDIII an ineffective teenager in an adult life, running errands for his father. "Milkman" (a nickname given by Freddy aimed against his mother), on the other hand, is how he is known in places like the Blood Bank, fitting in with people like named Guitar or Empire State or Railroad Tommy. When MDIII sets out in search of his origins, the narration calls him Milkman, but he introduces himself as Macon Dead, or just Macon. Initially, when he meets the people his father grew up with, he plays up his status as Macon Dead, son of Macon Dead, basking in the attention of pe...

The characters of  Wide Sargasso Sea  can broadly be divided into two groups: those native to England, and those native to the West Indies. One the major themes that results from this is the nigh-insurmountable divide that exists between the two. Antoinette and Rochester are two characters who attempt to cross this Wide Sargasso Sea. The West Indies and England are depicted as being near-literally separate worlds. Those in one world find it hard to comprehend the reality of the other. Sometimes it's simple things, like how Rochester feels that the West Indies are too brightly colored, the hills and mountains are too big, how nature itself seems to hold hidden menace. In contrast, Antoinette thinks England must be impossibly dull and gray, and is only vaguely familiar with seasons from the books she reads (and many other facts that have no real meaning to her). Rochester and Antoinette both think the other's world to be surreal, like a dream. Rochester thinks the environment ...