Ok I’m back. Let’s do this:
- Ody now stands in the courtyard - that’s meant to be the next morning? On the feast of Apollo. Fry adds dung hitting a guard’s face to make Melanthius run away, then Philoetius trips him up - that’s fun but not technically how they meet
- Guy who throws cows hoof at Odysseus Telemachus shouting at him? Makes Telemachus bring out mother? Nah.
(Names: Tessepus? Aduleius also of Same? Are these from the Elders? I can’t remember)
- Theoclymenus making his vision of blood on walls is correct, but now we’ve got a suitor throwing wine at the walls to make fun of it? (I guess they do laugh it off?)
- “She never comes down” yeah she does actually, in Book 1, Book 18, Book 21
- The axes- in this version they’re just axe heads, in boxes held by slave women, with a hole in the middle… are they going to have to get on the floor to shoot? SO he has them put on tripods, not digging a trench to put them in like in the Odyssey. WHY is this different? What’s the point? It’s described really clearly!
- Antinous doesn’t try the bow first. Elodie’s, the priest, goes first, fails and tells everyone they should go home when they also fail. Then he doesn’t go home. Antinous they watches everyone else doing it then suggests the wax. By the time it gets round to Eurymachus (Antinous turn next), Antinous then suddenly reminds everyone it’s the Feast of Apollo that day (which, hubristically, they haven’t bothered celebrating til that moment) so they should do it tomorrow instead. Thus, getting out of having a go at all.
- Penelope does not leave the room because she’s feeling sorry for the beggar. In fact she’s just meant to have delivered a zinger of an insult to the suitors and said she’ll give the baggage a load of gifts if he wins the shot. Penelope then leaves the room because Telemachus has thrown his weight about, reminding her he’s now in charge, and told her to go to her room because this is man’s business. She does what he says because in Book 1 he did this (on Athene’s suggestion) and showed he had finally come of age. But she does so ‘in wonder’ because she seems to realise something odd is going on. Telemachus also does this here so he can send her out of the room to her quarters without arousing suspicion. All the slave women have also been removed from the room, *before* Odysseus completes the axe trick. Penelope is again made to fall into god-induced sleep.
- WHERE IS THE CRACK OF THUNDER FROM ZEUS WHEN HE SHOOTS* THE BOW?! Why would you skip that?!
- when he’s shot the arrow successfully, Odysseus says something potentially confusing to the suitors Telemachus (at the end of Book 21) about him as a guest not shaming his host, pretending he’s still a beggar, to further take the suitors by surprise at the start of Book 22 by revealing himself at last - I would honestly have preferred it if he did what he does in Fry’s version and jumps on a table exclaiming “Now the fun begins!!”
- (Ody talks a lot about the slave women getting raped by the maids, not what Fry said about them earlier)
- Eagle and owl perched on the rafters? (Zeus and Athene) - No. There is a moment in this scene in the Odyssey where Mentor (Athene) miraculously arrives then flies out the roof opening as a bird, but it’s not this
- Odysseus and Telemachus seem to have done all the killing, without the help of Eumaeus and Philoetius? Where’ve they gone?
- Eurcleia the nurse surveying the carnage and shrieking in triumph - it doesn’t happen exactly like that (because, doh, the doors are locked? but that is a very Eurycleia thing to do
- The ‘bad’ slave women (ie those who Eurycleia said were disloyal by sleeping with the suitors, though essentially only one - Melantho - is said to actually choose to sleep with Eurymachus, the rest are implied but frankly, as slaves, they don’t really have a choice) are made to come in and clean up the blood of their ‘lovers’/rapists in the original. They’re simply not here.
- THE END? Wtf where’s the rest of Book 23? Or any of Book 24?
- Doesn’t have the hanging of the slave women? !
- Fry addresses his reasons for ending it here - he chooses to end his version before Penelope and Odyssey inevitably have their night together and then he mentions that what comes next is the Laertes bit and the civil war that Athene has to end. BUT HE STILL MAKES NO MENTION OF THE MAIDS’ EXECUTION. (The effect of this section is to make both Odysseus, who says to put them to the sword as an honourable death, more concerned with their rights, and Telemachus, who is the one who, having been tortured by the mean old maids while a child, decides to hang them instead, less disappointing.)
And instead we just get a twee little happy ending: “he’s home”.
And then he starts talking about the Telegony?? Ffs.
- here endeth Fry’s Odyssey -
