Greek Mythology, Monsters and
Exotic Worlds, Part I
HOMER
AND
STANLEY
KUBRICK’S
2001: A SPACE
ODYSSEY
You can’t have an Odyssey
without an Iliad
The Iliad is the story of the Trojan War – a long, bloody conflict
lasting ten years.
How did Troy finally fall?
The Trojan Horse
Odysseus gets all the credit for the Trojan Horse, which finally
allows the Greeks to capture Troy, thus setting off the epic
cycle of myths surrounding the return (or dispersal) of the
heroes of the war (eg. Menelaus, Diomedes, Aeneas)
Vergil’s famous line:
quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
The horse appears as a gift to the Trojans, but a gift fraught with
dangers (keep this theme in mind when we get to Kubrick)
The Odyssey in 1500 Words Or
Less
1. Odysseus visits the Lotus-Eaters. Where were they going again?
2. Our hero visits the land of Polyphemus. In a fit of pique, he
decides to tell the Cyclopes his real name, thereby bringing
down the wrath of Poseidon upon him and his men.
3. Aeolus, king of the winds, gives Odysseus enough wind to get him
where he’s going. His companions open the bag at the wrong
time and get blown off course.
4. Odysseus visits the Laistrygones, thereby making his men lunch.
I mean, they REALLY became lunch.
Our Hero Soldiers On
5. Odysseus ends up on Circe’s island. With a little help from moly,
he saves his men from a life of swine.
6. The Sirens’ Song.
7. The Greek version of “between a rock and a hard place” – Scylla
and Charydis.
8. Odysseus’s men slaughter the Sun’s cattle. Zeus then proceedes
to sink their boat when they leave the harbor.
Just One More Adventure!
9. After getting blown back to Charydis, Odysseus paddles about for
nine days, winding up with Calypso.
John van Sickle sums this adventure up thusly:
“From there he gets carried for another nine days to another island,
where the nymph Calypso receives him in her vine-girt cave by
the sea. For seven years, then, he remained there, required to make
love to the goddess by night, but sitting by day on the shore and
longing for his distant home.”
10. Odysseus finally gets home, bloodily reclaims his palace, and….
the story ends. What happened then?
“Something Wonderful.”
What is an odyssey?
“The first MYTHEME in our odyssey plot involves getting there
(getting started, then getting through or over any hurdles, obstacles,
perils, or getting out of baited traps along the way), the second
MYTHEME involves getting what you went to get once you get there;
while the third MYTHEME involves getting away with it in spite of
the guards; and the fourth MYTHEME involves getting back where
you came from, again, as on the way out, getting past dangers, which
may be harder now because the prize you're bringing back makes
you more likely to get ripped off.” (van Sickle)
“Something Wonderful.”
“In such a story, we can notice, the traveler keeps coming up against
the unexpected; in other words, dangers and distractions keep
overtaking one. Now "over" plus "take" add up to what in the
languages derived from Latin gets called SURPRISE; while coming
upon or up against gets called ADVENTURE. So the odyssey we have
been defining turns out to be a classic plot of adventure and surprise.”
Now we can turn our attentions to Kubrick’s freaky future mindtrip:
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Analogy
The movie is fraught with analogies to classical stories and themes
When you are watching the movie, see if you agree or disagree with
the following four parallels:
1. “The Dawn of Man” – the first scene in the movie.
The monkeys meet the monolith, and humanity is changed
forever – is it for good or ill?
The Monolith as Pandora’s Box?
2001: A Space Analogy
2. The Monolith as a futuristic Trojan Horse.
The scene on the moon when Dr. Floyd visits the Monolith
on the moon.
Leonard Wheat has drawn the following analogies to this
scene and the Horse:
a) The moon monolith scene takes place at the moon crater
Tycho. Kubrick evidently scoured the list of moon crater names
- Tycho is a real crater name - and chose Tycho, the name that
most nearly resembled Troy. Both names are short, both begin
with T, and both contain the additional letters o and y.
Tycho symbolizes Troy.
2001: A Space Analogy
b. The moon monolith is inside the walls of a pit. The pit's walls are
the walls of Troy.
c. The astronauts in the pit, symbolizing the Trojans, curiously
inspect the object that stands within the walls.
d. Something comes out of the monolith - a powerful signal
beamed at Jupiter
e. The symbolized Trojans reel in pain. The surface story has no
need for them to reel in pain, no need for the signal to be painful
or even audible. Kubrick had the astronauts fall back in pain
because he wanted to symbolize the pain of the dying Trojan warriors.
2001: A Space Analogy
3. The adventures/misadventures of Dave are to read as those of
Odysseus.
a) Dave’s last name is Bowman  Odysseus was the original
“Bow-man”
b) When HAL locks Dave out of the Discovery, the mythological roles are reveresed from the Polyphemus story:
the human relies on brute strength while the monster
relies on genius.
c) When Dave enters the Monolith, he forgets himself and his
mission; the Monolith serving as a the lotus-plant.
2001: A Space Analogy
4. The Prometheus myth and the Creation of Man.
- the Monolith brings man a gift, a gift that soon proves to be
beyond his control (as does Prometheus)
-men are created perfectly in a Golden Age, then quickly
degenerate into the Iron Age (HAL?)
-The movie is about creation by design –
computers and their part in them - computers that
can misfunction and cause destruction - or was
that all part of the plan?
2001: Different Analogies
As you watch, keep these in mind, but also see what your mind tells
you  the movie came out in 1968, and people STILL don’t know
what it means.
When you watch 2010:
The Year We Make
Contact, see how
long they puzzle
over one line from
Dave Bowman: