In the beginning of reading the Aeneid, we flipped open the book and put our finger on a passage to try and interpret it for ourselves, because the Aeneid is full of advice. A Virgilian lottery they called it. My passage was something about waging war and battle- I don't remember the specifics. I thought it was full of horseradish, and then I went through a vicious breakup only a month after putting my finger on the passage. Fighting with my emotions and logic, and then my ex’s of course was something I didn’t see as a war, but I realized after that we had to come to neutral terms (although we were both bitter with resentment). From a passionate furor to a stone-cold pietas, it was all very similar to Aeneas and Dido. I used Dido as an example of what NOT to do- to burn yourself down so a man can step over your ashes with pity. After all, she is forced to realize that “Aeneas is driven by duty now…” rather than furor, rather than love for her which seems very selfish to Dido. He then sails away forever, only seeing her in the Underworld and being met with a glare. I first thought that I was going to be Dido- merciless, crazed, and then dead if my Aeneas were to sail away without me. I realized that I had to become Aeneas- I needed to be able to detach myself from something temporary for a greater purpose– myself of course! (Also, my ex hasn’t gone to school in an attempt to avoid me for three days, so I think it’s adequate to say the roles have been subverted and he’s become Dido. Though I haven’t heard anything about him building a pyre yet.) And we may mistake Virgil's Aeneid for having foresight, but it's more of a educated guess that forces you to accept that struggle will come. Through literal spoken advice to Aeneas from mentors, family, and friends, to actions from other characters that give the readers an example of what to do in a situation, the Aeneid adequately prepares the readers by giving us values and morals that can easily be translated to contemporary ideals, like loyalty and accepting fate like when Aeneas is forced to confront a burning Troy and the signs that Venus bring to make him leave his home. Although not everyone has had their homes burned down and guided by divinity to create a new nation, I'm sure we've all go through challenges like Aeneas does such as coping with the loss of a loved one, forcing yourself to go through challenges and accidentally hurting people for your own benefit. It's a lot and it’s all relatable because it further proves that bad things happen whether you like it or not. Not only does Virgil give us the comfort of furthering the understanding of fate, but he gives us a warning that the only thing you can do is to brace for impact. He goes even further to give us a little more reassurance by showing that even a strong and exemplary leader has his flaws, and that although Aeneas may not be in the same boat as you, he’s still sailing the same stormy sea.

5. High art/Low art: How does Atwood take on the conventions of literature, high culture, and canonized texts, tropes, or forms? What does she suggest about them?

Women are low art. Prostitution, sex, and the crazed madness of erotica ction and media all center around the beating down of women, degrading them until they’re a speck of dust small enough to vacuum while making sure they’re still alive and breathing, but only a few centuries ago we uplifted and worshipped women as goddesses, high priests, and matriarchs that nurture and care for society as they kept the world spinning. Women have been eroded by the waters of the patriarchal society that ts into every crevice it can, and while women have been preserved they are rarely appreciated in such a way that Atwood did in the Penelopiad. Not only is it a satire comment on how women are seen as gossipy, dramatic, and emotional creatures while being enduring and resilient, and we see how Greek and modern society slowly paints the picture of a Penelope, a terrible woman, but a good man. Pure, untouched, and a virgin woman– submissive and obeying to her husband, a fragile soul with a provocative edge towards other women who dared to disobey the natural “feminine”. Penelope sees herself as strictly “high art” because she is an eternal example of the traditional values that men oppress women with, but is she really? Helen’s story and beauty has been immortalized in a variety of texts, poems, songs, and paintings. Penelope’s story lies next to her husband’s adventures, the Odyssey by Homer. Although she restricts herself to appeal to a certain audience of men and men-following women, (or Homer made it so) she is still regarded as low art because of her status as a woman. She did everything right, dictated by the metaphorical cage she settled in and never bit the hand that fed her. “When would it be her turn to be revered?” Penelope asked, while it would be a silly question because she and all women know the answer to such a question- she would be chained to her husband as long as she lived through story and song. As she lived through her husband in her life, she would live through him in her death as well. However, Helen was more promiscuous, more naughty, more beautiful, yet she is considered the subject of many mediums of high art such as poetry and gold-framed oil paintings. She is the pinnacle of beauty as even Aphrodite admits it herself in the Iliad, giving her up as a gift to Prince Paris. She is traded between a woman, a man, and her husband, captured, perhaps tortured by remorse, but still a beautiful catalyst nonetheless for the Trojan War. She caused uproar, goggling eyes, racing hearts, trembling knees in thousands of men, yet chose to lay with a man other than her husband. She is remembered forever, yet her promiscuity seems to be a miniscule part of her identity. She had no attachment to one singular man, and her name is synonymous with glamor and beauty because she was the muse for men to paint and an example for other women to follow- to be beautiful and graceful, while Penelope was the muse for women to conform to for the sake of purity culture. Whichever choice causes women more pain is the more sought after female gure that men idolize, so both unattractive and independent women are criticized using both gures. Women are used to demean other women, and men use women either way to advance their own goals. Women are the tool, a shovel to dig into the dirt, while being the victim, the rock being chipped away at. Penelope is the tool, while Helen is the victim. But both are tools, and both are victims, are they not? Menial work like hauling around rocks is for those below our class, yet women toil to improve themselves and to improve the men around them. Being the tool, the worker, and the project is only one part of the female experience. Trapped within being the muse is no fun either, is it? Trapped within the frames of a painting, remembered as a detailed still life, evoking something other than intense emotion in men, unable to speak for yourself. The Penelopiad is a narrative memoirctold by Penelope herself lingering in the afterlife, conversing with people she regrets surrounding herself with in her past life. Clinging onto her husband and the trials she faced being loyal to him, pushing aside the maids and shaping a narrative where every other woman around her is vindictive and cruel for no reason. That being said, this can be connected to the fact that she believes she is being targeted for her status as a stay at home mother and a loyal wife, while really she understands that she is the puppet of the men around her and has slowly believed in the one sided perspective she shares with the audience as being the ultimate truth. Helen is her competition, her muse even. Penelope has essentially joined hands with the men in her lives such as her husband, the suitors, and her son, and become her own oppressor. Penelope has grandeur delusions of being high art, yet Helen is the high art. But really, no man or woman should strive to be art at all. Humanity is not a sightseeing tourist attraction. Being high or low art no longer matters when you are stuck being an inanimate statute, a being made of marble, groped all over with exposed bronze all over your bosoms, because you are an item of art.

some random poem ? about the seasons.

Don’t you know of the endless joy that comes from appreciating the small, autumn leaves? The golden brown crust of a toasted marshmallow, that of the same color of a crude pile of leaves we admire? Birds on a branch, observing the human masses as they walk by, we are serenaded with the hymns the birds will teach their children. A breeze will ripple against the grass’s flat body, as they all wave at you. When you don’t see the clouds anymore, look up and listen acutely to the mourning dove calling at your window. He is grieving the rain, pattering down on his favorite patch of dry soil he sits on in the morning each day. His supple wings will hit the air soon, as winter follows fall’s footsteps into the colder, longer days. The earth will whistle quietly, her breath flying across your hair, behind your back and making your ears turn red, ruby red. The green leaves will take their fill of sun, before mimicking the sun’s yellow rays and stepping down to the concrete sidewalks, joining all their friends under a blanket of dirty snow. As the leaves nap together, the big tree will hum only in the slightest, just to comfort them. The deer family tramples over them, as the father of the family has just led them to an untouched patch in the forest. The mother, her lithe figure stepping towards her husband with her two children trailing behind, one flicking their ears and grudgingly pursuing their mother, the other eagerly prancing about and enjoying the soft flakes of ice cold fluttering down their pelts. All the while, a squirrel paces to and fro on its branch, occasionally looking below for acorns or other little treats it may find. Here is winter in full bloom, though no flowers remain in sight in the piercing cold, the creatures find beauty in blank white, as it covers them with dreadful temperatures, they still prance on the frozen-over lakes and rejoice in such times. Once the snow melts, again the flowers basking in their own zeal, maybe the breeze will humble them, plucking petals away while their cries of disparity ring through the dirt. The rose bush with thorns has no intimacy with its thoughts, as it reaps only the compliments sown from busybody humans, and it carves yet another picture in one’s mind of love. It will learn not to meddle with dealings that aren’t their business, and the bush will collectively turn its head when it sees a two-legged creature, for its bitterness and shame will make it tremble. You will rip a leaf off the bush, and it will blow away into the large unknown, perhaps onto the ground where it will not see the earthly mistakes of other creations here, face down on the dirt. Away from you, and everyone else, the leaf will think tremendously of itself ; “I am the most well versed in literature! For I have not heard one bird sing its song today, or another leaf recite new fiction. I know more marvelous rhymes than any of these frivolous humans do, and I am of course the most poetic in my family- dare I say the world.” The world does not belong to the leaf, because he has been isolated, he shamelessly proclaims his naivety in the world where the wind shows no discrimination against those of different agendas, and will pluck his senseless ideas and hurl them across the world.