Portnoy’s complain – Philip Roth 2005

The interesting thing about Roth’s books is, that they seem to need no interpretation but he presents it all in front of you – yet they are still complex and interesting.

Basically the book describes the growing up of a jewish boy in New Jersey. I think, though, that the feelings about the madness at home and how sane all other families seem, are easily applicable to most of us (I can certainly relate to them).

The whole story is told as a monologue of Portnoy with his doctor and accordingly starts of with a definition of his ‘condition’: „Portnoy’s complain: A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longing, often of a perverse nature.“ (Roth, 2005, p.1).

„Doctor, do you understand what I was up against? My wang was all I really had that I could call my own.“ (Roth, 2005, p.33). „I couldn’t even contemplate drinking a glass of milk with my salami sandwich without giving serious offense to God Almighty. Imagine then what my conscience gave me for all that jerking off! The guilt, the fears – the terror bred into my bones.“ (Roth, 2005, p.35).

„Who filled these parents of mine with such a fearful sense of life?“ (Roth, 2005, p.35). „These two (people) are the outstanding produce and packagers of guilt of our time.“ (Roth, 2005, p.36).

„Dotor, I can’t stand any more being frightened like this over nothing! Bless me with manhood! Make me brave! Make me strong! Make me whole!“ (Roth, 2005, p.37).

„but I see her (his mother) standing at the sink salting the meat so as to rid it of ist blood, when the attack of „woman’s troubles“ sends her, with a most alarming moan, rushing off to her bedroom. I was no more than four or five, and yet those two drops of blood that I beheld on the floor of her kitchen are visible to me still.“ (Roth, 2005, p.43).

„But I will not treat any human being (outside my family) as inferior!“ (Roth, 2005, p.75).

„The lesson may have been learned that to break the law all you have to do is – just go ahead and break it! All you have to do is stop trembling and quaking and finding it unimaginable and beyond you: all you have to do it, is do it! What else, I ask you, were all those prohibitive dietary rules and regulations all about to begin with, what else but to give us little Jewish children practice in being repressed?“ (Roth, 2005, p.79). „Why else, I ask you, but to remind us three times a day that life is boundaries and restrictions if it’s anything, hundreds of thousands of little rules laid down by none other than None Other.“ (Roth, 2005, p.80).

„it makes no difference to them (‘gyoim’)– what they want they take, and to hell with the other thing’s feelings (let alone kindness and compassion). (...) our illustrious neighbors who own the world and know absolutely nothing of human boundaries and limits.“ (Roth, 2005, p.82).

„Why we can eat pig on Pell Street (a Chinese restaurant) and not at home is because ... frankly I still haven’t got the whole thing figured out, but at the time I believe it has largely to do with the fact that the elderly man who owns the place, and whom amongst ourselves we call „Shmendrick“, isn’tsomebody whose opinion of us we have cause to worry about. Yes, the only people in the world whom it seems to me the Jews are not afraid of are the Chinese. Because, one, the way they speak English makes my father sound like Lord Chesterfield; two, the insides of their heads are just so much fried rice anyway; and three, tot hem we are not Jews but white – and maybe even Anglo-Saxon. Imagine! No wonder the waiters can’t intimidate us. Tot hem we’re just some big-nosed variety of WASP“ Boy, do we eat!“ (Roth, 2005, p.90).

„Still cursing himself for speaking not a word to the succulent pair of tits that rode twenty-five floors alone with him in the elevator! Then cursing himself for the opposite as well!“ (Roth, 2005, p.101).

„She (his goy-ische girlfriend) never raised her voice in an argument. Can you imagine the impression this made on me at seventeen, fresh fromm y engagement with The Jack and Sophie Portnoy Debating Society? Who had ever heard of such an approach to controversy? Never ridiculed her opponent! Or seemed to hate him for his ideas! Ah-hah, so this is what it means tob e a child of goyim, valedictorian of a high school in Iowa instead of New Jersey; yes, this is what the goyim who have got something have got“ Authority without the temper. Virtue wuthout the self-congratulation. Confidence snas swagger or condescension.“ (Roth, 2005, p.217).

When visiting his goyim girfriend’s parents he discovers language: „“Good morning,“ he says, and now it occurs to me that the word „morning,“ as he uses it, refers specifically tot he hours between eight A.M. and twelve noon. I’d never thought o fit that way before. He wants the hours between eight and twelve tob e good, which ist o say, enjoyable, pleasurable, beneficial! We are all of us wishing each other four hours of pleasure and accomplishment. Why, that’s terrific! Hey, that’s very nice! Good morning! And the same applies to „Good afternoon“! And „Good evening“! And „Good night“! My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn’t just a crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you’ve got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren’t only bombs and bullets – no, they’re little gifts, containing meanings!“ (Roth, 2005, p.221).

„well, why, damn it, can’t I have some fun! Why ist he smallest thing I do for pleasure immediately illicit – while the rest oft he world rolls laughing in the mud.“ (Roth, 2005, p.272).

Shakespeare - Othello

This book is a perfect treatment of jealousy. In all its intricate mechanics.

Iago, the central agent to stir jealousy, does so without a cause, just like jealousy itself. He feels overlooked for the post as a lieutenant and also hints that his wife had cheated on him with Othello – but these motifs only play a minor role over the play.

Desdemona’s conversation support that point: „Desdemona: Alas the day, I never gave him cause! / Emilia: But jealous souls will not be answer’d so; They are not ever jealous for the cause, /  But jealous for they’re jealous: it is a monster / Begot upon itself, born on itself.“ (Shakespeare, 2011, p. 87).

And also Iago is admitting it himself: „Iago: `Twas mine, `tis his, and has been slave to thousands; / But he that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him, / And makes me poor indeed.“ (Shakespeare, 2011, p. 67).

And most famously: „O, beware, my lord, of jealousy, / It is t he green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.“ (Shakespeare, 2011, p. 67).

One central theme as a cause for jealousy in the book is deception – sometimes real, sometimes imagined, but the effect on jealousy is the same. Iago declares openly right at the beginning that he deceives: „But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.“ (Shakespeare, 2011, p. 4).

And once deception and accusation set the foundation for jealousy, it grows upon itself

For example: Othello does not react to the first accusations that his wife is cheating on him. But Iago knows that time helps suspicions and finally jealousy to grow: „After some time, to abuse Othello’s ear / That he is too familiar with his wife. (...).... hell and night / Must bring this monstrous birth to the world light.“ (Shakespeare, 2011, p. 29).

Once the seed of doubt is sown, whatever the suspected do, it will look like further proof of jealousy: „Iago: And what’s he then, that says I play the villain? / (...) How am I, then, a villain / To counsel Cassio to this parallel course, / Directly to his good? Divinity to hell! / When devils will the blackest sin put on, / They do suggest at first with heavenly shows, / As I do now: for whiles this honest fool / Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes, / And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor, / I’ll poor this pestilence into his ear, - / That she repeals him for her body’s lust; / And by how much she strives to do him good, / She shall undo her credit with the Moor. / So will I turn her virtue into pitch; / And out of her own goodness make the net / That shall enmash them all.“ (Shakespeare, 2011, p. 255.

„Iago: Trifles light as air / Are the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ.“ (Shakespeare, 2011, p. 73).

Once jealousy is growing, it blurs the line between knowing and doubting:

„Othello: Why, why is this? / Think’st thou I’d make a life of jealousy, / To follow still the changes of the moon / With fresh suspicions? No, to be once in doubt / Is once to be resolv’d. (...) No Iago; / I’ll see before I doubt.“ (Shakespeare, 2011, p. 68).

Not knowing anymore what is real and what imagined, makes a person lose his characrer: Thus the play ends, by Othello blurring the line and almost losing his identity:

„Lodovico: Where is this rash and most unfortunate man? / Othello: That’s he that was Othello; - here I am.“ (Shakespeare, 2011, p. 141).

What money can’t buy - Sandel, 2012

„Today the logic of buying and selling no longer applies to material goods alone, but increasingly governs the whole of life.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.6). „When we decide that certain goods may be bought and sold, we decide, at least implicitly, that it is appropriate to treat them as commodities, as instruments of profit and use.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.9).


Thus „markets have become detached from morals and that we need somehow to reconnect them.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.6) and he concludes that „we drifted form having a market economy to being a market economy.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.10).

The corruption argument is the more interesting one: It basically says that „some of the good things in life are corrupted or degraded if turned into commodities. (...) health, education, family life, nature, art, civic duties and so on.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.10).  “Turning access to Congress into a product for sale demeans and degrades it. From an economic point of view, allowing free access to congressional hearings „underprices“ the good, giving rise to queues.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.34). Yet, selling the access „treats Congress as if it were a business rather than an institution of representative government.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.34). „It degrades Congress by treating it as a source of private gain rather than an instrument oft he public good.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.35). Similarly, „a hired friend is not the same as a real one. You could hire people to do some oft he things that friends typically do.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.93).„Somehow the money that buys the friendship dissolves it, or turns it into something else.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.94).





He uses various examples to show this: from the possibility to pay one’s way to the top of the queue these days, to the use of incentives to elicit the desired behaviour (instead of intrinsic motivations), to the betting on life (from life insurances to viaticals), to the commercialisation of sportstars’ autographs. And he summarizes: Most of this market thinking is argued for by utilitarian arguments: “market exchanges benefit buyers and sellers alike, thereby improving our collective well-being.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.29).


But, Sandel elaborates on two core arguments against market reasoning: fairness and corruption: The fairness argument says, that  „market exchanges are not always as voluntary as market enthusiasts suggest.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.111). It is always based on economic necessity and poverty.
Moreover applying market principles and financial incentives crowds out more intrinsic motives: when the Swiss government planned a nuclear waste site most villages weren’t too happy about it. They final focused onone particular village: „Although the facility was widely viewed as an undesirable addition to the neighbourhood, a slim majority (51 percent)  of residents said they would accept it. Apparently their sense of civic duty outweighed their concern about the risks. Then the economists added a sweetener: suppose the parliament proposed building the nuclear waste facility with an annual monetary payment. Then would you favor it? The result: support went down, not up. Adding the financial inducement cut the rate of acceptance in half, from 51 to 25 percent.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.115).„the offer of cash to residents oft he village felt like a bribe, an effort to buy their vote.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.115). „The offer of a private payoff transformed a civic question into a pecuniary one.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.116).

Sandel concludes: „Some things are so fundamental to the orderly operation of society (...) so intrinsic to its dignity, that they have traditionally been entrusted only to people hired and equipped by all of us, in the interest of the common good.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.194).„The great missing debate in contemporary politics is about the role and reach of markets. Do we want a market economy or a market society?“ (Sandel, 2012, p.11). „we hesitate to bring our morals and spiritual convictions into the public square. But shrinking from these questions does not leave them undecided. It simply means that markets will decide them for us.“ (Sandel, 2012, p.202).

Richard Wright - Black Boy

A very personal book about growing up as a black boy in the South of the USA in the early 20^th century. Very raw and brutal – not in a physical sense, but in the way a mind is shaped by suffering from a racist society.

„Anything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible ... Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I mde things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it fort he sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.“ (Wright, 1937, p.83).

„I had never in my life been abused by whites, but I had already become as conditioned to their existence as though I had been the victm of thousand lynchings.“ (Wright, 1937, p.84).

„Gambling never appealed to me. I could not conceive of any game holding more risks tha the life I was living.“ (Wright, 1937, p.217).

This book also shows how language and stories helped Richard Wright at least acknowledging what is wrong.

„That was the way things were between whites and blacks in the South; many oft he most important things were never openly said; they were understated and left to seep through to one. I, in turn, said nothing; but I did not leave the room; my standing silent was a way of asking him to reconsider, telling him that I wanted ever so much to try for a job in his mill.“ (Wright, 1937, p.188).

„I rode off, feeling that they might shoot at me, feeling the pavement might disappear. It was like living in a dream, the reality of which might change at any moment.“ (Wright, 1937, p.201).

„My first serious novel was Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street. It made me see my boss, Mr. Gerald, and identify with him  as an American type. I would smile when I saw him lugging his golf bags into the office. I had always felt a vast distance separating me from the boss, and now I felt closer to him, though still distant. I felt now that I knew him, that I could feel the very limits of his narrow life.“ (Wright, 1937, p.273).

something different today - move on

I have been working for the last months on this campaign and I feel this is s close as I will come to writing a book. I did the strategy (whatever that means) and it just feels right to share it here the project of a participatory film directed by Asger Leth starring Mads Mikklesen:

Sharp - How Brands Grow

Very interesting marketing book, Sharp uses all empirical data that are available to him to build marketing laws. Sounds a bit dull, but the resulting laws are surprising, counter-intuitive and fresh.

The basic finding is, that most of the variable traditional marketing tries to influence, are determined by the size of the brand: “This suggests that marketing metrics, including market share, all reflect one thing: popularity. Therefore brands vary in their popularity, and everything flows from that.” (Sharp, 2010, p.215).

This idea doesn’t sound to extreme first, but the implications are: for example, what about the idea, that we should create bran fans, fans that ‘love’ our brands. What about the Pareto law, that 20% of our customers make 80% of our turnover?

These and many marketing myths are not only busted, but replaced with new laws and learning – and there are also some extremely interesting along the way.

ON GROWTH

“Put another way: loyalty doesn’t vary much.” (Sharp, 2010, p.19). “brands grow primarily by increasing their market penetration.” (Sharp, 2010, p.21). “Among the submission for the Advertising Effectiveness Awards – run by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) – 82% reported large penetration growth, 6% reported both penetration and loyalty growth, and only 2% reported loyalty growth.” (Sharp, 2010, p.22).

ON RETENTION

“whether marketers should emphasise retention or acquisition. Modern marketing ideology says retention is cheaper than acquisition.” (Sharp, 2010, p.28). “a brand’s defection rate is essentially a function of its market share, and the category it’s in.” (Sharp, 2010, p.30).“How many customers a brand loses in a year depends on how many it has to lose in the first place.” (Sharp, 2010, p.33).

“it isn’t possible to radically alter defection rates without massively shifting market share.” (Sharp, 2010, p.31).“Asking a brand like Honda to halve its defection rate is equivalent to asking it to increase its customer base more than thirtyfold.” (Sharp, 2010, p.33). “A simple explanation for the pattern described above is that customer defection is largely outside of marketer control.” (Sharp, 2010, p.35). (product service etc).

Accordingly growth can only come from winning new buyers.

Light buyers

“If 80% of your buyers delivered only 20% of your annual sales, it would be tempting to ignore the” (Sharp, 2010, p.50). But Sharp’s data show it is in any category 20/60.  “One could argue there is little need to market to these (heavy) buyers at all, especially considering that they are comparatively non-responsive to advertisng.” (Sharp, 2010, p.45). Because they have so much product and service experience.

If one does not only snapshopt research, but uses panel data one sees, that “over time the heavier buyers get lighter, and the non-buyers and light buyers get heavier.” (Sharp, 2010, p.50)  “Put simply, next period your heaviest 20% of customers won’t be so heavy, the light buyers will be heavier.” (Sharp, 2010, p.52).

“And when brands grow or decline there is a lot of change in their category penetration (the size of their buyer base) and little change in their purchase frequency.” (Sharp, 2010, p.53).

“An implication of the skewed distribution of buying rates is that to maintain sales a brand needs to reach out to these masses of buyers. For two reasons: (1) there are so many of them. (2) they buy so infrequently and could easily forget about you.” (Sharp, 2010, p.45). Thus targeting only heavy buyers isn’t useful  - we should always target all buyers of the category – mass marketing in the best sense.

ON ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR

“Attitudes reflect how much a buyer buys the brand, i.e. they reflect loyalty. We know that loyalty metrics don’t vary a lot between brands. Consequently, the buyers of brand A have the same opinion of brand A as buyers of brand B have of brand B. I call this the ‘my Mum’ phenomenon.” (Sharp, 2010, p.66). “The big discovery is that the customer bases of brands in a category are very similar – except in numbers of buyers. (…) there are just ice-cream buyers who sometimes buy vanilla and very occasionally buy strawberry.” (Sharp, 2010, p.71).

ON LOYALTY

“Universal loyalty is not exclusive – buyers purchase more than one brand, and the more purchases an individual makes the more brands he or she buys. Polygamous or divied loyalty is quite the norm.” (Sharp, 2010, p.95).“loyalty is divided and strongly driven by opportunity. This is a more prosaic picture than most marketing texts paint.” (Sharp, 2010, p.98). 

ON LOVEMARKS / BRAND FANS

“Consumers are busy people. They have hundreds of thousands of brands vying for their attention. (…) Therefore, the choice of brands is trivial compared to the decision of whether or not to purchase from the category. (…) Brands are necessary evil: they add a layer of complexity t the buying decision, but they also allow for routines.” (Sharp, 2010, p.101).

 “If on the first survey, 30% of people agreed with the statement, ‘Hertz rents attractive cars’, then on any subsequent survey the figure is also usually very close to 30%. This (misleadingly) suggests a great stability of beliefs. (…) Typically only about half the people who on the first survey agreed with the statement do so again on the second survey.” (Sharp, 2010, p.103).“This instability in response does not mean that those who agreed on the first interview but not the second have  fundamentally changed their minds about the brand. It’s just that they sometimes think this, so on some interviews you catch them sying, and some you don’t. This phenomenon applies to all brands, and to all image beliefs, attitudes, purchase intentions and awareness measures.” (Sharp, 2010, p.104).

“Since brands aren’t very important to us, brand buying tends to have a strong effect on our rather weak attitudes.” (Sharp, 2010, p.110).“So perhaps our attitudes merely reflect our buying. Our behaviour has a strong affect on our attitudes.” (Sharp, 2010, p.105).

ON DIFFERNETIATION

“All the markets we have examined, whether using our own or others’ data, follow a similar pattern: an average of 10% of any brands’ users think their brand is different.” (Sharp, 2010, p.124).“Buyers don’t need to see differentiation to buy a brand or keep buying it.” (Sharp, 2010, p.125). “If buyers of a brand don’t often think their brand is different or unique, then presumably this is not the main reason why they buy it.” (Sharp, 2010, p.126).

 “Rather than striving for meaningful perceived differentiation, marketers should seek meaningless distinctiveness. Branding lasts, differentiation doesn’t.” (Sharp, 2010, p.112).

“the reduced emphasis on meaningful differentiation makes branding even more important. Loyalty is underpinned by salience not love/hate. To encourage brand loyalty a brand must stand out so that buyers can easily, and without confusion, identify it.” (Sharp, 2010, p.129).  “

ON ADVERTISING

“There are two reasons why advertising’s sales effects are hard to see in weekly and monthly sales figures (i.e. sales neither jump when advertising starts or increases, nor collape when it is reduced).” (Sharp, 2010, p.137).“Consequently, statistical models of changes in advertising spend and changes in overall sales report a weak association. But if we look below the surface and divide the customers who were exposed to the advertising from those who are not, then we can see sales effects that were previously masked.” (Sharp, 2010, p.138).

 “The sales of a brand re like the height at which an airplane flies. Advertising spend is like its engines: while the engines are running everything is fine, but when the engines stop, the descent eventually starts.” (Sharp, 2010, p.140).“Consider what happens to the buying behaviour of a person who drinks Coke several times a day after seeing a Coca-Cola ad – nothing changes. So who is Coke’s advertising aimed at? It’s aimed at the millions of people who occasionally buy Coca-Cola, who scarcely ever think of Coke nd who seldom buy it. These consumers could easily forget about it and not make their semi-annual purchases.” (Sharp, 2010, p.140).

ON CONVINCING PEOPLE

“The key marketing task s to make a brand easy to buy; this requires building mental and physical availability.” (Sharp, 2010, p.180). “building mental availability requires distinctiveness and clear branding. Building physical availability requires breadth and depth of distribution in space and time.” (Sharp, 2010, p.180). “A brand is a very small part of its customers’ lives; people don’t think much about brands, even the ones they buy – after all there are so many brands. This is largely why brands advertise, to ensure that customers don’t forget to buy them.” (Sharp, 2010, p.183). “we buy the same few brands over and over again and simplify buying decisions by only noticing our few regular brands. (…) We seldom ever want a large selection from which to choose as it’s too difficult.” (Sharp, 2010, p.186). “Yet the most important part of any buyer’s purchasing process (…). This part of the process occurs before buyers consciously evaluate which brands to choose: buyers, in effect, ‘decide’ not to consider the vast majority of brands on the market.” (Sharp, 2010, p.186).

“Brands that are easier to buy, for more people in more occasions, get bought more often. Brands that have greater market share are better known (and more noticed) by more people and are more widely available.” (Sharp, 2010, p.189).

 “One thing that makes established brands so valuable is that mental and physical availabitlity takes a long time to build and a long time to fade.” (Sharp, 2010, p.196). “To marketers, these market-based assets provide security – next year’s sales will be not too dissimilar to this year’s. This is very valuable, though it also creates problems in evaluating marketing actions.” (Sharp, 2010, p.198). “We see this in price elasticities where larger brands have lower elasticities.” (Sharp, 2010, p.198). Mc Café: “Nothing Mcdonald’s did was innovative; it was completely a ‘me too’ catch up exercize.” (Sharp, 2010, p.199). “Mc Donald’s didn’t do anything radical; it just got competitive again. But thanks to its existing mental and physical availability it can sell a lot of coffee and toasted sandwiches. Essentially, McDonald’s took away a ‘reason not to buy’, which was undermining its market based assets.” (Sharp, 2010, p.199).

Homer – The Odyssey

I can’t believe it took me more than 30 years to read this. For me, the most interesting theme is that of hospitality – the quality of men is revealed in how they treat stranges. Great men welcome even complete strangers welcomed with gifts. And the preciousness of the gifts shows the status of the host. This is very reminiscent of Mauss’ gift theory.

“This stranger, whoever he may be – setting forth from the East, it may be, or from the West – has come in his wanderings to my house. He asks for help to return home and implores us to ensure him this. Let us hasten, then to prepare his voyage, just as in times past, for no one who once has come to my house lingers here long, fretting for convoy home.” (Homer, 1980, p.85).

“Sir, I beg you to reverence the gods. We are suppliants, and Zeus himself is the champion of suppliants and of guests; ‘god of guests’ is a name of his.” (Homer, 1980, p.105).

“I gathered much wealth among the men of Egypt, because they all made me gifts.” (Homer, 1980, p.171).

“if a man is gracious in thought and gracious in deed, his guests carry good report of him far and wide over the world, and he finds many to call him noble.” (Homer, 1980, p.235).

And people who aren’t visited are not very high regarded “whose land have I come to now? Are the people barbarous, arrogant and lawless, or are they hospitable and godfearing?” (Homer, 1980, p.158).  “Merciless one, who of all men in all the world will choose to visit you after this?” (Homer, 1980, p.107).

But this gift giving is not as innocent as Mauss describes it: “But now let us give him also, each man of us, a massive tripod and a cauldron; later we will repay ourselvesby gathering from among the people, because all giving and no receiving would bear very hard on us man by man.” (Homer, 1980, p.154).

The second interesting theme is that of phrases: I think there are plenty of very colourful phrases. Such as:

“Leaving the lovely lake of Ocean, the sun leapt upwards into the brazen sky, bringing the light of the Deathless Ones, bringing it to for mortal men who live on the earth that gives them grain.” (Homer, 1980, p.23).

“Dawn comes early, with rosy fingers.” (Homer, 1980, p.32).

“There is nothing more devoid of shame than the accursed belly; it thrusts itself upon a man’s mind in spite of his afflictions, in spite of his inward grief. That is true of me; my heart is sad, but my belly keeps urging me to have food and drink, tries to blot out all the past from me; it says imperiously: “Eat and be filled.”” (Homer, 1980, p.81).

“Then the sun sank, and light thickened on every pathway.” (Homer, 1980, p.188).

“let him sleep warm till he sees before him the golden robes of Dawn.” (Homer, 1980, p.235).

“spear tipped with keen bronze.” (Homer, 1980, p.246).

“O Father Zeus, no god is ruthless as you are ruthless. You bring men into the world yourself, yet you have no more compassion for them than to plunge them into suffering and bitter tribulations.” (Homer, 1980, p.248).