Pomona's Hero's Journey Blog

Note that this blog post assumes you’ve read all the way to the end and contains massive spoilers for the end. Let’s take a moment to go over the end result of AILD for each family member’s subplot. Cash: his leg is maimed because of Anse’s trick with the cement, and he therefore will not be able to take the barn roof job, or practice much carpentry in general in the future. Darl: he goes insane for a variety of reasons and is sent to Jefferson™, possibly never to be heard from again. Dewey Dell: after Anse “borrows” her secret abortion money, she is stuck with her problem. Jewel: Anse has taken his horse, and he really had no other subplot. Vardaman: no indication on whether he got the train, but I suspect not because they have no money. Anse: gets them teeth. Buries Addie. Noticing a common thread between most of these resolutions? I certainly do. All the children get massively (and unknowingly) screwed over by Anse, while Anse gets the only happy ending the book has...

Everett’s redemption in the song scene in O Brother is an easy comparison to the archery contest in the Odyssey. In this very important scene, he shows his true colors both to his wife and to everyone, although, just like in the archery contest, the crowd doesn’t understand who he is at first. This blog post is a long and rambling discussion about the leading couples in both the Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou, and what their reunion scenes tell us about each. He shoots down a leader by foiling the campaign of the reform-championing politician. He also gets a chance to display his archery singing prowess. (I just noticed that in O Brother, singing has a bunch of meanings. It can represent storytelling, prophecy, boasting, deception, seduction, fighting, etc., and the meaning is dictated as much by the situation as it is by the song!) Most importantly, Everett manages to impress his wife: I am the great lead singer of the Soggy Bottom Boys!  Now obviously, the s...

In 7 th hour today I talked briefly about loaded dice. In Rome, the story goes, dice were almost always clearly misshapen or loaded. The Romans, however, didn’t care, because they thought that the outcome of each role was decided by a god, not by the shape and weight distribution of the dice. I did some research on this story tonight and it turns out that I was most likely wrong, since I only found one article that mentioned this Roman faith in Fortune. And I know that Rome and Greece exist in vastly different time periods and are different cultures, though they have very similar religions. But regardless, I think that the anecdote is a great analogy for how the gods act in the Odyssey. The gods are loading the dice of almost every major scene that Odysseus or Telemachus appear in. Most of Odysseus’s good standing seems to come from the gods, and conversely, the gods are also the ones who forced him to suffer so much. To a modern reader, the idea that some of Odysseus’s decision...

Warning: the following message runs to exactly 900 words, making it just a bit long. I hope it’s not too cliché to write a bunch about Lord of the Rings here . If you haven’t read the book and want to, a) don’t read this post because it’s packed with spoilers, and b) go out and get a copy and spend an afternoon reading – it’s pretty great.   Lord of the Rings is, at its core, a quintessential Hero’s Journey. Frodo, a normal- ish Hobbit (Hobbits are like humans, but short and with hairy feet, so they’re not exactly epic heroes) is gifted a magic disappearing ring by his uncle. Then his uncle’s friend, a wizard, comes by to tell him that the ring is a powerful, magical, e xtremely dangerous artifact . Furthermore, the only way to prevent the forces of the evil almost-god Sauron from overtaking the world is to chuck the ring into a volcano, helpfully positioned in Sauron’s home of Mordor. T he wizard won’t take the ring because its power is too tempting, so ...