Madmen

In my culture people look forward to the next blockbuster movie, or the next episode of a television show.  A few people wait with baited breath for their favorite author to come out with his or her next book.

I understand these things.  I do them too, but this summer I have added something new.  I have been waiting all week to hear the next chapter of my audio book read to me.  Today Hector is killed!  I knew it was coming and the drama has been building.  Hector killed Patroclus the day before yesterday and yesterday the Trojans and Greeks fought over his body like hyenas in the depths of darkness.  Today Achilles will kill Hector and while I know Achilles is considered to be the epitome of a hero, my sympathies tend to lie with Hector who seems to me more compassionate and steadfast.

I didn’t feel that way in the past because I only saw other people’s versions in movies, or heard other people’s thoughts on The Iliad itself.  I have no pity for either side, fighting to steal each other’s women as if they were cattle in the field and letting their egos lead them into clash after clash of bone breaking, blood spilling agony.  Everyone loses.  Some of them just lose less than others.

I find myself thinking of the story itself, a grand action tale full of intrigue, love affairs, and battles.  But I also find myself thinking about Homer and who he was. 

Whether he was one man, or many, a bard or a blind beggar, his story is the kind people listen to for one reason if not another.  The names made it personal.  The gods made it mythical.  It is full of the same intrigue, romance, and back stabbing drama people still crave in soap operas, summer action films and backyard gossip.  It is the journalist’s dream.    Everyone is trying to justify his or her own actions as something worthy of living and dying for. 

Shrouded in the misty unknown parts of history it is another one of those tales “told by a madman, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  (To quote another famous bard.) 

But I am loving it.