#wordsages2

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“What the Dragon Said: A Love Story”, Catherynne M. Valente

[sharkjumpers]

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i'm izzy. 21. i love my friends and the house of atreus and comic books and a lot of other things too. please tag suicide. two things about me: i love to migraine-post & my memory is nonexistent. your good mother will not insult you anymore.

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The Trojan Women, transl. Richmond Lattimore

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The action of The Trojan Women occupies the time between the fall of Troy and the departure of the Greek fleet for home—a fleet, so the prologue tells us, which will be wrecked with much loss. The bloody and heartrending aftermath of the Trojan War—including all the episodes dramatized here—was extensively depicted in ancient Greek epic, lyric poetry, and art. At the opening of the play, all the Trojan men are dead or vanished. The women are dealt out to their future masters. The child Astyanax, son of Hector, is slaughtered “as a measure of safety.”

Finally, the greatest of the “Trojan Women,” Troy herself, is annihilated. There is no dramatic solution, no relief. The innocent suffer. Odysseus, the villain behind the scenes, triumphs, and of the persons who appear, only the stuffy, weak-willed Spartan Menelaus and Helen, his pretty, clever, faithless, worthless Spartan wife, come out safe and sound. For despite the predictions of wreck and hardship, all readers of The Odyssey knew that Helen, Menelaus, and Odysseus survived to a prosperous old age.

The Trojan Women, transl. Richmond Lattimore

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