
Teaching “The Odyssey” at San Quentin - holychiz
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/21/teaching_the_odyssey_at_san_quentin/
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arethuza
My father, who was not highly educated, spent a lot of time in the Arctic
during WW2 in the company of an Oxbridge classicist and managed to pick up a
_lot_ of Homer, even though by his own account he never tried to learn it - it
just "stuck".

What I take from that is that although Homer has a reputation these days for
being a bit esoteric these stories, some of the oldest we have, are capable of
very wide appeal.

As an aside - what I personally find most interesting is the potential
historicity of Homer, probably through the combination of my father's love of
Homer and watching Michael Wood's "In Search of the Trojan War" at an
impressionable age...

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grey-area
A great read about the possibility of finding redemption in literature; I wish
we saw more stuff with this depth on HN.

 _The opening of “The Odyssey” describes Odysseus as polytropos, a man “much
turned” and “much turning.” He makes much happen, and much happens to him.
When I selected “The Odyssey” as the first text for my English 101 course at
San Quentin Prison, I worried about the choice. It’s a difficult work for
readers of limited literary background, and I wondered how a population of
mostly black and brown men doing long prison terms would relate to the story
of an ancient Greek king. As it turned out, I had them at polytropos._

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VLM
I liked it as an example of the positive effect of pure education without a
vocational component. Too much emphasis is placed on vocational training for
vocational reasons. Education improves your entire life, training merely
improves your job performance. Or education makes life worth living, where
training merely makes it easier to earn money.

There was a bit of journalistic make believe in the story. Anyone who's
actually read great human literature would not remotely be surprised that all
humans like it, especially hard core types like people who teach the subject,
so the first line or so about pretending to be surprised black and brown
people would like human literature is just ridiculous journalism.

(edited to add: It was an interesting article, worth the time to read, and
shows linkbait doesn't have to be as icky and stereotypical as the worst
linkbait out there. If you must have advertising supported content, let it be
this good.)

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ajtulloch
In 2002, This American Life did a show on a Hamlet performance in prison -
available at [1]. It's compelling radio, and I'd highly recommend it.

"Shakespeare may seem like an odd match for a group of hardened criminals, but
Jack found that they understand the Bard on a level that most of us might not.
It's a play about murder and its consequences, performed by murderers, living
out the consequences."

[1]: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/218/a...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/218/act-v)

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jackfoxy
I recall having drinks in 1990 with a 30 year-old Ivy League grad in
Manhattan, an up-and-coming type, somewhere in the intersection of Wall Street
and politics, can't remember exactly what he did. He was adamant about cutting
off the western cultural canon in education and repeatedly used Homer as an
example of its irrelevance. His theme was we should be teaching young people
about other cultures because the world will be ever more connected, there are
more people from non-western cultures in the world, blah, blah, blah. He was
real up front about this being social engineering. My Ivy League companion who
had introduced us thought I was a real jerk for arguing with him. History has
shown high culture surviving the most determined political onslaughts because
it has intrinsic value.

~~~
mathattack
It shouldn't be either/or. It shouldn't be either Western or Eastern. It's
shouldn't be literature or non-fiction. It shouldn't be arts or sciences.

It's possible to study the Odyssey and Tales of Genji, and learn facts about
the historical context of both.

For better or worse, my undergrad was more a case of "neither" and I've been
in catch-up mode ever since. Perhaps that was a lot due to my own short-
sightedness in course selection.

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cm2012
One of the most interesting things about Homer's works is how very, very
different the system of morality was back then. Throughout the book they talk
incredibly casually of killing civilians and raping and enslaving their women.
It is not just in war situations either (which is bad enough) - it is just not
wrong to kill some island people who aren't part of your home country or
allies.

One thing unique about Christian values (new testament) was the introduction
of the idea the might doesn't necessarily make right, and the focus on the
downtrodden instead of the epic. If you read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall
Apart, the main reason Christianity spread so quickly and powerfully in their
missionary work was that they accepted the outcasts of the society, lepers,
poor people, weak people, etc.

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antiterra
Civilization has made things better but people are still capable of murderous
savagery, even when considering themselves Christian. There's a huge list, the
Crusades (incredibly abominable[1]), Germany in Belgium, Nazis, European
fascism, Inquisitions, Muenster's Anabaptists, Rwanda, Kosovo, heck, even the
Mongols had absorbed Nestorian Christianity. Then there's the past century in
South and Central America, dirty wars, drug wars, guerrillas, and the corrupt
governments that spawned them (both influenced by the meddling of the US.) I'm
sure I am missing a ton here, like the colonization of the Americas and the
war in the Philippines or all the rape in the prison system that the majority
of people appear to find unconcerning.

Take a look on YouTube at nationalist videos posted by Greeks and Turks, and
read the comments that show they barely view each other as human. Modern
humans are not so different.

[1] _Women, even nuns, were raped by the Crusader army, which also sacked
churches, monasteries and convents. The very altars of these churches were
smashed and torn to pieces for their gold and marble by the warriors who had
sworn to fight in service of Christendom without question._
-[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Constantinople_(1204...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Constantinople_\(1204\))

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antiterra
What a preposterous article, everyone who reads HN comments has learned that
anything other than non-fiction is 'fake,' offers only the heavy-handed
opinion of the author and is a waste of time to read.

But really, while I am struck by how apt the idea of The Odyssey as a parallel
to imprisonment is, it's not so surprising that Homer would resonate. It's not
self-absorbed academic stuff, it's gritty human drama. The Iliad is more
gruesome and brutal than your average Tarentino film-- perhaps even more
harrowing as it constantly introduces people who are neither bad guys or good
guys just as spears shatter their teeth or pulse in their dying hearts.

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norswap
I disagree. Fiction is surprisingly good at making one think about his own
life. It allows us to live vicariously experiences we never could have in our
own life, and I think that leaves the reader a little bit richer and wiser.

~~~
saraid216
One thing I've long said is that a writer's job is, effectively, to find
metaphors and provide them for popular usage.

