Jake Berns
Classical and Medivial Literature
Dr. Watson
5/8/13
There are many great chatercser that we have read in this class. We have gone from the moutians in the hobbit all the way to the seas in the odyessy. One set of books that took variosu stuff from other books was You Know Whne the Men are Gone. This book had various stories that talked about army wives who were wainting for there husanbans to come home and to be with them. The books had the fellng of homewocming that the book The Odyessy played apon. That book was all about Odyesseus, wh after the Troajn war wanted to go home to his wife. He had to face vriaosu perils on the way home that hapmered his progress and made his younrey back even logner than it could have been. The many wives of these soldiers also had to wait for a long time for their husamnd to reutnre, and some didn't return at all, or they reutnred under bad cirucmstnances. Most of these stories have mnay simialries and differences in the way thathow theys variosu realted back to past novels that we read, espcially the Odyessy with the theme of homecoming. All of these stories are baiscally a modern adaption of the odyess story and what happens in war to the people you lvoe and care for and each story has one or two main throwbacks to the story of odyness. The first story that will be covered is the story of You Know the Men are Gone, which is concidneilt both the title of both the book and of the first story in the book. In this book, the cahracter of Meg is wainting for her hsuambnd to reurne to fort hood, while also trying to get to know the character of natalie who just moved in. Right off the back, I think that the cahrater of natalie can relate back to odyess in the fact that she is almost like circe and calyspeos in that she is somone that the other women fear will win their hsamnd over in the war if they meet someone like her over the sea. They see her as a threat to them, which is what odyessus faces when he is dealing with these same charcerts. The dog that she has can somewhat be cosndiered as a represntation of the womens fear of her and it can be seen as somewhat as a mosnter I nthe snese of the odyesnes. It is eomthing the womens fear and is the thing that they hate natilei the msot for the fact that it keeps them up all night with its barking.
Thye have to deal with this monster in the same way that odyessus ahs to deal with monsers like cyclcops. The ending of this partiucalr novel also has one noticalbe differneces bewteen the book odyesne and severl other stories in the same text in that this book is soley about Meg, the wife of the soldiers. We don't actauuly see the hsuamnd till the end when he fincally coems home and the story is mainly told thorugh her eyes as oppsed to the other way around. The next story is Camp Liberty. This story is