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Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is transparently grounded in Homer's Odyssey, though not in any simple, one-to-one correspondence of elements. The complexity of the relationship between the two stories appears, among other places, in Ruby's reaction to The Odyssey itself as Ada reads it aloud to her (p. 140). Having read both literary works in their entirety, discuss the relationship between them in the light of Ruby's comments. Why does Frazier include Ruby's foray into literary interpretation? How are we to take these comments? Do they support or conflict with Frazier's own handling of Homer's material? That evening after dinner, Ruby and Ada sat on the porch, Ada reading aloud. They were nearly done with Homer. Ruby had grown impatient with Penelope, but she would sit of a long evening and laugh and laugh at the tribulations of Odysseus, all the stones the gods threw in his passway. She held the suspicion, though, that there was more of Stobrod in Odysseus than old Homer was willing to let on, and she found his alibis for stretching out his trip to be suspect in the extreme, an opinion only confimed by the current passage in which the characters were denned up in a swineherd's hut drinking and telling tales. She concluded that, all in all, not much had altered in the way of things despite the passage of a great volume of time. |