Food for Thought

A Response to The Odyssey, attributed to Homer

Is the journey the reward? In Phaeacia, Odysseus explains the stomach’s influence. It represents the core of the body. The belly is the guiding force, the gut instinct behind a person. Odysseus chooses to follow his gut and consequently survives every obstacle.

The human form is perfectly functional when all of the constituent parts run in harmony. However, if someone neglects certain pieces the results can be fatal. The belly, hidden away, seems insignificant to a person.

The belly’s a shameless dog, there’s nothing worse. Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget- destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness, sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding, ‘Eat, drink!’ It blots out all the memory of my pain, commanding, ‘Fill me up!’ (186).

It can seize control of the mind if it is left unattended. If the head is the authority, the decision-maker, what does it mean that it can be so easily swayed by the stomach? The mind can temporarily suppress hunger, but inevitably the hunger will rage up and consume the mind. The head determines the fate of the body, but the stomach provides the foundation for it. If a card is pulled from the bottom of the structure, the carefully crafted house of cards collapses.

A sturdy base can hold up the rest of the framework. Odysseus’ most basic desire is to return home. This is his guiding force. The delectable temptation to journey home is too much for Odysseus to ignore. He yearns for the welcome of a familiar hearth that provides comfort. That is the bounty that he longs to devour. When Calypso holds him on the island, he is essentially useless, “weeping there as always” (155). However, after Odysseus “fortified himself” by restarting his pursuit of home he is able to tread water for days a time (155). Treading water implies keeping the head above the water level. He saves his head by following his gut instinct.

The other element of the stomach is, of course, physical. Food is a basic necessity for life. Therefore, when Odysseus does not eat for those days that he is stranded out at sea, he loses his strength. His mind must go into its unconscious state to escape from the pain of his empty belly. Athena sent “sleep in a swift wave delivering him from all his pains and labors” (167). However, she must wake, guide and hide him until he is nourished. “The awesome goddess poured an enchanted mist around him” (180). It requires external influence to overcome the nagging of an empty stomach.

A well-nourished body can endure strife. A neglected belly can become the Achilles’ heel of even the strongest man. It erases memory and reason, reverting man back to a savage state. Odysseus’ epic journey home proves trying. However, isn’t the sweet satisfaction of satiating that hunger rewarding enough to justify the trials? There is little that is more comforting than a full stomach. Odysseus’ ultimate feast is his homecoming.

Ice-Nine: The End of the World

A Response to Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Literary allusions pervade Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Within the first line alone, he references two different works: “Call me Jonah.” Vonnegut pulls from both the Bible and Melville’s Moby Dick, which makes the reader think about the wrath of God and nature’s indifference to man respectively. Another literary reference that Vonnegut makes is to Homer’s The Iliad; Dr. Hoenikker’s home is Ilium, New York. The Iliad also features gods who interfere in the lives of men. Those same gods controlled nature as well, according to Greek mythology. Homer’s epic poem shows readers death and deception (namely, the Trojan horse). The Odyssey, which is attributed to Homer as well, makes an appearance in Cat’s Cradle in Bokonon’s poem, “Calypso.” The nymph Calypso kept Odysseus on her island for years until the gods instructed her to let him leave the island. Once again, Vonnegut’s allusion has gods not only controlling nature, but they also control the course of a man’s life. The gods care greatly for few men, one of whom is Odysseus, but everyone else does not receive the special treatment afforded to the loved ones. In a less related note, Vonnegut’s use of the curse word “fug” is a reference to Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead.

The conversation between Jonah (aka John) and Dr. Breed summarizes—in a fairly self-explanatory manner—what the aforementioned literary allusions signify, at least in part:

‘I understand you were Dr. Hoenikker’s supervisor during most of his professional life,’ I said to Dr. Breed on the telephone.

‘On paper,’ he said.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘If I actually supervised Felix,’ he said, ‘then I’m ready now to take charge of volcanoes, the tides, and the migrations of birds and lemmings. The man was a force of nature no mortal could possibly control’ [emphasis added] (21).

The attempts by man to control or subdue nature are simultaneously futile and perilous. Dr. Hoenikker’s playing with atoms produced the atom bomb, and his invention intended to solidify mud resulted in ice-nine. The latter is a substance that solidifies all liquids, such that when dropped into a river, the effects of the ice-nine will spread through oceans and across the globe. A human body, which is, incidentally, made up of 70% water*, freezes when it comes into contact with ice-nine. Therefore, the entire planet and every living creature on it (except ants) die due to Dr. Hoenikker’s manipulation of nature.

Bokonon’s “Calypso” proposes a solution to the problem of the universe’s uncontrollability. He says that people can pretend to have control over their worlds:

I wanted all things

To seem to make some sense,

So we all could be happy, yes,

Instead of tense.

And I made up lies

So that they may all fit nice,

And I made this sad world

A par-a-dise (127).

The word “seem” means that Bokonon is concerned with man’s illusion of control. The “sad world” contains an infinite series of random events. Instead of actually trying to control the world, which is dangerous and impossible, people ought to “lie.” More specifically, according to Bokonon, they should lie to themselves about the nature of the world. It is “a par-a-dise,” which sounds suspiciously like a pair of dice. Life is inherently uncertain; it’s a gamble. No man can be sure what he will roll, nor can he affect or change the outcome of the roll. Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle reveals to its readers the harsh reality that man knows essentially nothing. When men like Dr. Hoenikker learn too much and try to alter nature, it has apocalyptic ends. Nature does what it will without a thought to man; the gods arbitrarily interfere in the world. Man has little to no power in this life, but in the mean time, Bokonon believe that it’s pleasant to tell oneself otherwise.

*according to dubious sources on Google. Please correct me if you have more accurate information.