希臘神話【潘妮洛普】: 觀點與角度 (上集) / Margaret Atwood's "The Penelopiad": Point of View (Part 1)

“Now that I'm dead I know everything”

『我現在既然死了，就什麼都明白了 』

Do you ever imagine what your point of view (POV) could have been if you were to live another person's life or see the world through the eyes of others? It could be argued that the recent popularity of reality TV and gossip news of celebrities is just a reflection of our collective "voyeurism" desire to glimpse into other people's lives and escape the more mundane and even miserable ones of our own.

However, from a writer's perspective, the use of a different point of view (POV) can be a really powerful tool to tell an otherwise too familiar story. Such is the case with Canadian writer Margaret Atwood瑪格麗特‧愛特伍when she tells the story "The Penelopiad"【潘妮洛普】that is loosely based on Homer's " The Odyssey" 荷馬的【奧迪塞】. Now many of us have read the Greek legend and are quite familiar with the main character Odysseus 奧迪修斯who fought the Trojan War特洛伊戰役. He could have gone home to his wife Penelope for supper had he not poked the eye of the Cyclops whose Dad happened to be a God. The angry father cast a spell on his son's bully, or bad food, and Odysseus and his men spent the next 20 years wandering in the Mediterranean high sea trying to find their way home. (Lesson #1: Don't poke people's eye).

While readers are familiar with Odysseus' odyssey, little was told by Homer about life on the dark side of the moon, the long 20 years endured by Odysseus's wife Penelope. Ms. Atwood skilfully used the POVs of Penelope and her 12 maids to reveal what had happened. In the play "The Penelopiad" that I saw recently, Penelope and the maids had died and were in Hades recounting the missing 20 years. Essentially, after a long wait, Penelope found out that: (a) Odysseus was not coming home for supper any time soon; (b) her husband was not with the "septic bitch" Helen of Troy, root cause of Penelope's jealousy and misfortunes; and (c) she did not know where Odysseus was. (Lesson #2: Keeping track of the whereabouts of your young husband is harder than you think.)

.... to be continued 下續

[Photo Credit: Globe and Mail]