Charlotte Malerich
8/29/2010
Does Mythology Matter? A Test Case: Class and Conflict in the Odyssey
Going on six years now, I've taught a university course on Greek and Roman mythology, working out of
texts that predate Christianity, nation states, and the free market by centuries. Part of the interest, for
me and my students, seems to be the remove: the stories describe events and settings vastly different
from anything in our experience. Yet that remove also puts us in danger of wasting our time. How
applicable is this knowledge to real life? It's lovely to know the Olympian gods and goddesses and all
nine muses, but the time and energy spent learning these tidbits could be spent in other areas, more
immediately rewarding. So I've taken to asking my students why we study mythology, and why it's
worth studying at all.
This is not a mere exercise. It is a problem that I myself am constantly trying to work through. How do I
justify the time and energy I devote to what are, after all, "only stories"? How do I justify coercing and
bribing—with grades and percentages, verbal praise and smiley faces on their homework—young men
and women to read and analyze ancient texts? Young men and women, who, after all, are really in my
power because at the end of the day they will have to work for a living, and without a college degree in
hand, odds are against them. So what's really best for them? Surely I should be steering them toward
practical skills, not esoteric knowledge about the royal house of Thebes or references to Stoic
philosophy.
And so for me, the justification (at least part of it) has not been that the specific knowledge a student
can gain in studying mythology, but what s/he can do with that knowledge. For analyzing a story is an
immensely practical skill, albeit not one many of us can get paid to use. It seems to be a truth that
humans use stories naturally to communicate points of view, to order and categorize information, and
regulate the vast potential range of human behavior. Stories shape our expectations of one another,
ourselves, our leaders, our society. And without honing our skills of analysis, it's hard to even realize
when and how this process is taking place. To demonstrate, let's consider the Odyssey, one of the
better known texts of the ancient Greeks, still widely read, admired, and enjoyed.
The hero of the Odyssey is Odysseus, king of the Greek island Ithaca, who spends ten years away fighting
in the Trojan War, and another ten struggling to get home. Back on Ithaca, the local noblemen have
moved into his home, vying for marriage with his wife and control of the kingdom. When Odysseus at
last returns, disguised as a beggar, he gains access to the house and learns how well the members of the
household have behaved during his lengthy absence. Wife Penelope and son Telemachus remain
steadfast, as well as the loyal servants (slaves) Eumaeus the swineherd, Philoetius the cowherd, and
Eurycleia the nursemaid. Other slaves are not so dedicated to the memory of their absent master.
Instead, they've hitched their wagon to Penelope's suitors, expecting that Odysseus will never return:
Melanthius the goatherd, Melantho the maid, as well as other unnamed female slaves who've been
sleeping with the suitors. Roughly the last half of the epic breaks down into one side versus the other,
like this:
Charlotte Malerich
8/29/2010
Good / loyal
Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus
Eumaeus, Philoetius, Eurycleia
Bad / disloyal
Suitors
Melanthius, Melantho, unnamed maids
Once Odysseus reveals his true identity and slaughters the suitors, he allows Eumaeus and Philoetius to
mutilate Melanthius (cutting off his ears, nose, and testicles). The disloyal female slaves are forced to
clean up the gore, then Telemachus strings them up from the rafters to die. But the Odyssey isn't all
about negative reinforcement for disloyalty and infidelity: good slaves Eumaeus and Philoetius are
promised a promotion to the level of princes, with real estate and wives of their own.1 As for
Telemachus, Penelope, Eurycleia and the rest of Ithaca… well, presumably having their beloved and
benevolent father/husband/master/king back is reward enough. For make no mistake: Odysseus has
not returned to Ithaca and wiped out the local nobility in order to abolish kingship and servitude.
Actually, one might kinda, sorta, maybe argue that kingship and servitude are more firmly entrenched
than ever, now that the rightful king and master is back on top.
Don't get me wrong. The tearful reunions between loyal members of the house and the battle-scarred
hero are truly affecting. And the suitors and disloyal slaves are such obnoxious characters, it's hard to
feel too bad about their brutal ends. If we're repulsed by the violence, our sympathies with the hero are
re-established in the ensuing descriptions of Odysseus and Penelope, coming to turns with one another
again as husband and wife; and the final heartfelt reunion between Odysseus and his aged father. And
Odysseus certainly has our sympathy going in. By the halfway mark of the story, he's been through the
wringer, and we've been through it with him: the ancient poets even took the somewhat radical step of
switching narrator part way through and allowing Odysseus, in an extended first-person flashback, to
tell his own story. So we see the world through his eyes, and feel every separation, loss, and bitter
disappointment.
Consider that for a moment, though: through his eyes. The ancient Greek word for "hero" is heros,
which means "lord" or "nobleman," and that's just what Odysseus is. So when we look through the eyes
of our hero, we are seeing with the eyes of a lord and master. No wonder that, when it comes to the
folks back home on Ithaca, unquestioning fidelity is the highest virtue.
As I often (try to) point out to students, this is the storyteller (and the storyteller's society) at work. It's
the point of view, characterization, and underlying social interests that determine who are the good
guys and who are the villains. In the scenario as presented by the Odyssey, allegiance to the right ruler
1
Typical of much ancient (and modern) literature, land and women go hand-in-hand, being roughly the same
thing: property. As are slaves of both sexes. The gender implications also deserve consideration, which is beyond
the scope of this essay.
Charlotte Malerich
8/29/2010
is the critical criteria, sine qua non for membership on the good team. If you aren't supporting
Odysseus, helping him re-take his throne and reaffirm his position on Ithaca, you aren't on it.
But what if, instead of drawing the line of conflict as above between two competing regimes (King
Odysseus v. oligarchy of suitors), we told a story a little more like this:
Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus; Suitors
Rulers
Eumaeus, Philoetius, Eurycleia; Melanthius, Melantho, unnamed maids
Slaves
Who are the good guys now? Who are the villains? That depends on whether we're more inclined to
take the slaves' side, or the rulers.
Let's assume that we've been socialized to think slavery is a bad thing. Now if the story is framed from
the slaves' point of view, suddenly it doesn't seem so bad to hope, as Melanthius and Melantho do, that
the "rightful" master never returns. Even if we accept the ancient poets' characterization that the
suitors aren't doing Ithaca any favors—their sole activity seems to be partying all day in Odysseus' house
and consuming all they can—at least they aren't on the slaves' backs coercing their labor. In fact, the
slaves can get away with a lot more when Odysseus isn't around to be taskmaster.2 Instead of taking
opposite sides, Eumaeus and Melanthius, Eurycleia and Melantho could be organizing the mythological
equivalent of the Underground Railroad, or working together to overthrow the rulers altogether. In that
kind of story, playing nice with the suitors, even going for a roll in the hay, sounds more like a survival
strategy than moral turpitude.3 Those who would show real loyalty—to the suitors or the "better"
master Odysseus—look like brownnosers and traitors.
Yet, given the story as is, even modern audiences who, in concept, agree that slavery is always wrong,
will cheer for Odysseus without serious pangs of conscience, scarcely considering that his success is the
reassertion of his rights as lord and master—owner—of the people below him.
Therein lies the danger, and the power, of myths. By engaging our emotions and framing events from
the perspective of a character who is like us in humanity and yet not necessarily like us in values and
class interests, a story can lure us into agreeing with positions that we would never accept otherwise.
We want to side with the good guys, but we allow the storyteller (and the storyteller's society) to define
who the good guys are.
It might be all right to concede this power, uncritically, to fictional narratives. After all, the characters
we meet in the Odyssey aren't real people. But imbibing a steady diet of stories framed in the same
way, from the same point of view, prepares us to accept that point of view in real life as well as in the
world of the tale—even where that point of view is inaccurate and downright harmful. Eumaeus and
2
See Eumaeus' comments to Odysseus in Book 17, for instance, as they encounter Odysseus' neglected dog Argus
on the road. The species implications of the story, alas, are also the subject of another essay I haven't yet written.
3
This is the same kind of strategy which Odysseus himself engages in throughout the epic. He disguises his
identity, lies, and flatters wherever it might gain an advantage. He also sleeps with those above his station, the
goddesses Circe and Calypso. These actions are never rebuked. Thus a double double standard exists in the
Odyssey: not only are different codes of conduct applied to men and women, but to elites and masses as well.
Charlotte Malerich
8/29/2010
Melantho aren't real people, of course, but in the ancient world, their very real counterparts did exist,
slaves whose status as property went unquestioned. And how many human beings are there in the
world today, who have little to nothing beyond their own bodies, who must similarly labor for their
masters, without effective control of their own being? Slaves de facto if not slaves de jure.
Furthermore, historians, scientists, and journalists use the same narrative techniques as bards and
novelists. Factual accounts also demand heroes and villains, and lines of conflict. But honing our
analytic skills on fiction and myth, when the stakes seem comparably low, enables us to criticize the
authorities around us, whose version of events we are otherwise condemned to swallow.
Take mainstream U.S. news coverage of the Arizona anti-immigrant law S1070. Civil rights organizations
like the ACLU have criticized the law, arguing it will lead to racial profiling and discrimination,
particularly against Latinos. At this writing, the federal Justice Department under Barack Obama has
sued the state of Arizona over the law, allowing reports from liberal commentators to position the
Obama administration as the heroic defender of minority communities, versus the intolerant villains of
Arizona.4
And why shouldn't Obama and other Democrats be the heroes? After all, they support immigration
reform and bills like the Dream Act, which would offer legal residence to undocumented immigrants
who attend college or serve in the military. Obama isn't indiscriminately pro-immigrant, either: he's also
supported, for instance, the Secure Communities program, now effective in 544 jurisdictions in the U.S.,
which uses biometric markers like fingerprints to determine the immigration status of anyone who is
arrested. In other words, under Obama, rewards accrue to hard-working, well-behaved immigrants who
demonstrate their loyalty through military enlistment and belief in the American dream of social
mobility. Bad immigrants—those so vile as to get themselves arrested—are punished with detention
and deportation. In contrast, the conservative supporters of S1070 are persecuting all immigrants,
along with anyone who looks like s/he could be an immigrant (read: person of color, especially Latin).
Luckily, Obama, being the hero that he is, is willing to take on Arizona's assault on justice (and federal
authority). So the story looks something like:
Good
Obama, Democrats
minorities, immigrants, liberals
Bad
Republicans, Jan Brewer, other AZ officials
populists, conservatives
But framing the narrative in this way obscures, just as the Odyssey does, certain facts of the social
structure. Like Odysseus and the suitors, both Obama and the conservative politicians with whom he is
feuding are members of a ruling class, albeit with different philosophies and management styles. On the
flip side, both the working class people who rally behind Obama and those who'd hymn Glenn Beck,
4
More openly right-wing sources invert this, of course, making Obama the supreme villain and valorizing others
like Sheriff Joe Arpaio or Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.
Charlotte Malerich
8/29/2010
both immigrants and U.S.-born residents, both leftists and populists, all live in a political-economic
system that makes them vulnerable to recessions and depressions, subject to laws and trade
agreements that they had no hand in crafting or enacting. Like Eumaeus, Eurycleia, Melanthius, and
Melantho, none are their own masters.
When we interrogate further this narrative of noble, pro-immigrant liberal versus vile, xenophobic
conservatives, we find facts that do not bear out the distinction. After all, the Secure Communities
program is only a step removed from the most controversial part of the Arizona law: Secure
Communities has local law enforcement automatically checking the immigration status of anyone who is
arrested, while S1070 in its full effect would have police stop and check the status of anyone under
suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant (while not necessarily arresting that person). Surely if
the latter scenario leads to racial profiling—as the Obama administration complains that it does—then
the former can lead to the same form of discrimination and injustice. And Secure Communities is
already in effect, as noted above, and covering more ground than the Arizona state law. Obama's
Department of Homeland Security is likely to expand the Secure Communities program to the entire U.S.
The pace of deportations under Obama in 2010 is up 60% over the pace under Bush Jr. in 2008, and up
37% over 2009. Anyone under the impression that Obama is creating a tolerant, more understanding
environment for immigrants than a conservative administration would, must contend with these facts.
Then let's think about that Dream Act. As enforcement and deportations increase, so does the pressure
on undocumented immigrants to attain legal status. The Dream Act has been offered as the velvet glove
to this iron fist. Yet given the high cost of college tuition, shrinking public funds for education, and the
limited access to grants and loans that undocumented immigrants have, it is unlikely that many of those
who take advantage of this path to legal residency will be able to take the higher education track. It is
far more likely they will join the military. Understood in this way, the Act is a barely concealed
recruitment tool—a funnel to send a vulnerable population in the U.S. to brutalize vulnerable
populations elsewhere. But hey, Eumaeus and Philoetius seemed to enjoy mutilating Melanthius. So
why not?
Like Odysseus overcoming the suitors, I suspect that Obama will overcome his conservative adversaries
and push forward some type of immigration reform before his presidency is over. Either way, the ruling
class will remain the ruling class, the working class will remain the working class, and some will lose out
even more because they happened to be born on the wrong side of a border.
Yet when we, the audience, are prepared to criticize the stories we're told, we realize we don't have to
swallow whatever perspective the teller is offering. We are not passive listeners. We do not have to
take the conflict as is and side with one side against the other. Instead we can redraw the line of conflict
altogether:
Obama, Democrats, Republicans, Jan Brewer, other AZ officials
minorities, immigrants, liberals; populists, conservatives
Ruling Class
Working Class
Charlotte Malerich
8/29/2010
If we do that, who knows what might happen? We might actually stop self-segregating by race or
nationality. We might stop looking for the right ruler to support/revere/vote for, and instead look to
our peers and ourselves for help when we need it. We might indeed transform society. We might build
a new one altogether. Instead of standing with the nativists to exclude immigrants and leftists, or
standing with the liberals to exclude states-rights populists and right-wingers, we might see ourselves on
the bottom of the social hierarchy, and decide instead to exclude the people on the top.
This—this unmaking and re-making the story—is what I call intellectual self-defense. Our society
acknowledges a right to prevent others from entering our homes and our bodies (at least for most of
us). In studying and teaching mythology this way, I am asserting a complementary right: to prevent
others from entering our minds and hearts. Thoughts and ideas and feelings matter. Stories matter.
They have a powerful influence on what other types of invasions and intrusions we will accept. If we
systematically accept a ruling class viewpoint, from conservative or liberal rulers, we are predisposing
ourselves to believing whatever those rulers tell us. Even if it isn't the truth. We are also predisposing
ourselves to acting the way those rulers want us to. Even if it isn't good for us, or others around us.
My re-made story is also, of course, a story, and one that you, my audience, must similar interrogate
and analyze. The point is not that that you or my students accept my version instead of the official,
canonized version, but that you recognize the process, and have the wherewithal to perform your own
analysis, to imagine alternative versions of your own, and to decide, with your eyes open and fully
conscious, what is a story worth telling. My own teacher Lillian Doherty defines a myth as "a traditional
story that helps those who share the tradition to explain how the world works and where they belong in
it." In other words, myths are the tools a society uses to shape its members' world view. I am asking
that we draw back the curtain, unmask these tools for what they are, and then decide what myths we
want. I am asking that we be our own masters, architects of our own social engineering.