Comparison Studies Lesson 6: Segments and Story Arcs

Lesson Six: Segments and Story Arcs

Materials needed: With Rough Gods and access to linked documents.

This lesson can be used either to reinforce or introduce mythological knowledge or to enhance or introduce knowledge about plot structure, characterization, and other story elements.

In these sections from With Rough Gods, Palmer presents several fragments of a larger story.

Re-read and paraphrase any of the following sets and their linked Wikipedia entries:

Ariadne: "Ariadne & Theseus" (26) "Ariadne & Asterion" (27), "Ariadne & Dionysus" (28), and "Ariadne & Orpheus" (29)

Danaë and Perseus: "Poseidon & Medusa" (31), "Danaë & Acrisius" (32), "Danaë & Zeus" (33), "Danaë & Dictys" (34), "Perseus & Medusa" (35), and "Perseus & Polydictes" (36)

The Dark, Lost Helen: The War of Men (pages 41-52).

Answer the following questions:

1: Does the story "feel complete"? Why or why not? How would you, if you were the author, make the story whole or different? What aspects do you feel are missing or extraneous and why?

2: In the Ariadne cycle, she is addressed by four different men. Why don't we hear her voice? What would her voice be?

3: By contrast, it is Danaë who speaks in her poems. How is she "empowered" by this voice?

4: While Danaë is locked in a tower and then a chest, Ariadne is free to act on her own (though one could argue she is "trapped" on Minos by her father) but then abandoned on the island of Naxos. How does the nature of audience and speaker chosen by Palmer in these poems work with these two characters?

5: Perseus is both speaker "Perseus & Polydictes" and audience "Perseus & Medusa." Why? How is he presented each time?

6: By necessity, several aspects of the Trojan war are untouched upon by the poems in the section entitled "The Dark, Lost Helen." What aspects of the Trojan war that are missing would you include? Why? Write a poem in the style of With Rough Gods that would include such aspects.

7: Odysseus and Agamemnon feature prominently in the section entitled "The Dark, Lost Helen." Compare and contrast their personalities as presented in the poems. Are their personalities consistent or do they change? Who is speaking in "Odysseus & Agamemnon"? How do you know?

8: How is Helen viewed by her husbands in "Helen & Paris" (45) and "Helen & Menelaus" (52)? Why is it important that she be addressed in both poems? How is this reflective of her traditional role as the casus belli of the Trojan war? Read the poems "To Helen" by Edgar Allan Poe and "Helen" by H.D. How do the Helen poems of With Rough Gods fit in either tradition? What effects are created by the juxtaposition of the four poems?