‘I am Penelope’ - creative responses

Year 9 and 10 Latin students from Cheney School, Oxford, creatively use visuals, sound, and text to imagine the stories of Penelope, Telemachus, and the enslaved palace workers.

Drawing, by Nora Louth

Dear Father,

It feel strange writing to someone whom I’ve never met. I suppose I knew you when I was an infant, but of course I don’t remember that. Tomorrow’s my 18th birthday and I did find myself wishing I could spend it with you, but ah well, I understand that you’re off being the great hero and saviour of our people. But if it were to be for anyone’s sake, you should come back for mother. She trieds not to let her facade crack, but I can tell she’s worried about me, growing up with no father and all. And it doesn’t help that she’s under a lot of stress and pressure from a gaggle of detestable suitors. Each one of them seems to believe that he alone has a right to her. The sooner you get back, the sooner I can finally kill the lot of them. Please do hurry home. I don’t know how much longer we can all last. Even the birds seem to be singing less joyfully lately.

Kind regards from your son,

Telemachus

Letter from Telemachus to his father Odysseus, by Tremayne Michell

Haiku, by Greta Callaghan

We were happy. Me, my husband and our son. We were happy. We really were. But then he left us - abandoned, unprepared and surrounded by the luxury of a palace which no longer mirrored the shining bliss of the love that used to envelop what we called our home. He said he loved us. Between the kisses of farewell, he dared to utter the words “forever” and “family”. And we believed him. Me and our darling son - my darling son - Telemachus. Odysseus may have been there for his first step, but where was Odysseus when he ran? Odysseus may have been there for his first tear, but where was Odysseus when he cried? Where was he? Not here. 20 years worth of pity, sympathy and naivety fueled the realisation that we didn’t need him. I had enough love in my heart for Telemachus to make up for the fact that his heart was not even in the same ocean in which the island of Ithaca lay. But I still waited for him to come home - if he even called this his home still. 20 years ago, I would have done anything for him. Now, my loyalty is all that is left aside from a few crumbs of affection that I was sure I had swept away years ago. Loyalty that I will keep - not for him, but for the sake of my own humility and righteousness.

I don’t even know him anymore, but apparently the rest of the world does.

Anon.

I drag my hands through the white flowers, the fields of asphodel stretching out before me. We used to have asphodel you know, back home. The little kids would bring me back bouquets of them, but those lands are probably barren and dead by now. I look back on it fondly, a yellow memory. And they took me, they did not care, they brought me here. Here where the walls are cold and grey, the hours are long and laborious. We are told not to act up, not to stand out, should the master of the house bear witness. Then you would return to your cots with a swollen cheek and tears in your eyes. I dreamt of release, maybe I was looking to death to give me what I wanted. But the hunger still lingers, a gaping hole unable to be satisfied. A bruise left from countless nights watching the feasts but never participating. I can still feel it, even in the afterlife. I killed that girl, with flowers in her hair. She couldn’t survive it, the change. I suppose she was me, untouched by sorrow or fatigue. I had no choice. I’m sorry.

Animation and description, by Isla Danely

Composition, by Francis Limehouse

Dear diary:

Today was nothing but yes miss and no miss nodding and shaking my head all day long. A normal day really but then another slave decided it would be funny to tell the mistress that a fire had started and to evacuate immediately. Obviously everyone rushed out first the mistress, then her children, then the important figures, then the expensive slaves and then finally us common worthless slaves youngest first oldest last. I was the one who took the blame for that joke. I got 1 lash (from the whip) from every person who had to evacuate, including the person who actually said there was a fire, though I would not dream of telling the mistress. It almost reminded me of my old master. At least now I get fed once a week.

Simon Chauveau Depoil

Acrostic. Anon.

Verse 1:

wincing at such (Em)

your indispensability (C )

to my useless touch (G)

join us together (A)

we can share in thought (G->D)

imagine we’re both necessary (C->Bm)

even when I’m needed not (Bm-> Em) 

Chorus:

I’m perfectly fine (Em)

a nice waste of time (G)

but not something worth a war just to save (Bm->C)

rather something to be lost and forgot (D->G->A)

nothing divine, nothing much (A->Bm->C)

just almost enough (Em->D)

‘Almost Enough’ - a song from Penelope’s perspective, by Rachel Robinson

Anon.

Dear Diary,

It has been aeons since I was thrust upon this godforsaken rock. Following my capture in my, as I now consider it to be, youth, I have been forced to conform to a mediocre life of servitude. I serve no great king, nor do I perform my duties in a grand palace, nor do I spend the little, constrained free time I do receive in a bustling urban centre. No, it is my cruel fate to obey a petty fief of an island with more goats than people. In my slavery, it is not the oppressive lifestyle or the back-breaking labour, but the fact I am lower than the dastardly, conniving and dishonourable cheat that is Odysseus, King of Ithaka.

But now the wretch’s schemes are coming back to bite him. He is summoned to fight in a ridiculous conflict, one which would have him sail to Anatolia just to rein in an overpampered adulteress. The Liar-Baron to whom I swear fealty will no doubt exploit, plunder and con throughout his travels, all while having a ridiculous heroic tale spun in his name. I have seen and heard it a thousand times before.  

I hope he dies with the rest of them.

Johnny Magill