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The story of Agamemnon, as we heard it in The Odyssey involves his family killing him, then not respecting his dead body, not burying him properly, dooming him to suffer eternally in the afterlife. He is betrayed by his wife twice, because she is now with another man. The story of Agamemnon adds an interesting dimension to As I Lay Dying , when you consider the implications of the allusion in the title. Who, if anybody is Agamemnon? Clytemnestra? Who does the killing and who is being killed, beyond the literal things, and whose fault is it that everybody in the Bundren family is kind of messed up? In book 11, lines 424-29 of The Odyssey , Agamemnon narrates his own death like this:     As I lay dying, struck through by the sword,     I tried to lift my arms up from the ground.     That she-dog turned away. I went to Hades.     She did not even shut my eyes or close     my mouth. There is no more disgusting act     than when a wife betrays a man like that. These lines

I, like many people in this class, was born in the year 2000, the same year O Brother, Where Art Thou? was released. Like most moms, my mom sang lots of lullabies to me. O Brother Where Art Thou? is one of my mom’s favorite movies, so naturally she had the CD, and sang the songs from it as she tried to get me to fall asleep. “Didn’t Leave Nobody But the Baby” was one of my favorites, and as I got older I remember learning how to sing harmony from Alison Krauss’ performance of “Down in the River to Pray.” I always knew the recordings I loved were from a movie, but never really thought to watch it. Basically, the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou? was an entirely standalone media experience for me as a kid. You can imagine my surprise upon viewing the Siren scene in the film. But that’s the genius of the Coen brothers’ use of music in O Brother, Where Art Thou? By including the traditional music of the setting in the rural American South, the film creates an immersive se

Every hero is strong, smart, capable, and accomplished in his particular area. Odysseus is already a hero when we meet him, having fought in the Trojan war in the Iliad, and endured his suffering already. The thing that sets him apart from other war heroes (aside from being alive still) is that he is dang charming. He's a very talented storyteller, as we see when Alcinous and Arete beg him to continue talking while he relates his backstory to them. He's "tall and handsome" and Arete comments, "And what a mind!" (12, 338). Alcinous also comments "[Some people] fashion lies out of thin air. But when I look at you, I know you are not in that category," which is interesting because we know that Odysseus is actually quite prone to lying, as he does to his slave and later his wife Penelope, as well as to the cyclops (12, 365-6). Everybody likes Odysseus, even though to us he doesn't seem all that likeable. He sacrifices others for the good of him

To this day, I have never read Harry Potter.* Or Percy Jackson, or The Lord of The Rings. I know, shocking. That just wasn't the kind of literature I loved as a kid. My favorite books were Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Betsy and Tacy, A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Ballet Shoes, and The Penderwicks : stories of ordinary little girls, who were special in one or two ways, and whose lives revolved around their families and friends, who barely ever traveled out of their hometowns, and certainly didn't do magic. My favorite stories always took place in the past, and I remember being fascinated by the characters' everyday lives. For example, there's a scene in the book Betsy, Tacy, and Tib where Betsy and Tacy learn there is a new girl living down the street and use this newfangled thing called the telephone to say hello to her, and I remember just being so charmed by how they did things. Same goes for embroidery in Little Women