Jane Doe
Eng. 2332
Professor K. Martin
8 November 2005
An Analysis of James Brady’s Article
“Rising to the Defense of Homer, the Athens Homeboy”
	In his February 1997 article titled “Rising to the Defense of Homer, the Athens Homeboy”, published in Advertising Age, James Brady attempts to approach the touchy subject of male chauvinism in Homer’s Odyssey with a bit of humor. He rises to the defense of Homer quite well, by sarcastically putting Homer’s tale under the same scrutinizing microscope as one of Homer’s modern critics.
	 In response to a negative letter by Sharon Ronholt written to The New York Times criticizing Robert Fagles’ new translation of The Odyssey, James Brady does an okay job at tearing her argument down because he uses humor to do so. First of all, he lends legitimacy to his defense of The Odyssey by distancing himself personally from it by saying, “I can take Homer or I can leave him.” This objectivity allows Mr. Brady to weigh both Homer’s point-of-view and Ms. Ronholt’s point-of-view more clearly. Whereas many arguments written in the defense of a person, place, thing, or ideal typically have an agenda, Mr. Brady admits that he doesn’t particularly care for Homer. Mr. Brady apparently doesn’t care for loud-mouthed ignorant people, either, such as Sharon Ronholt of Stockton, California.
	Mr. Brady directly quotes Ms. Ronholt’s letter to the Times, and deconstructs her argument point-by-point, allowing her to stick her foot in her own big mouth. Sure, an adulterous male living in a male fantasy whose lifestyle “would have been totally unacceptable if pursued by his wife,” as Ms. Ronholt puts it, may be true today… But 3,000 years ago in a culture whose laws, mathematics, and alphabet we share, such a sexual lifestyle of a Greek male was the norm. Mr. Brady points out that she calls the Greeks an “alien culture” but it is we who are the aliens. The Greeks preceded Americans by millennia. We must read Homer in the context of his own surroundings, not filtered through today’s sociopolitical beliefs and sexual practices. Mr. Brady jokingly compares Homer to contemporary pornographer Larry Flynt.
Mr. Brady does the right thing by then pretending to apply Ms. Ronholt’s own methodology of literary criticism, and pretends to come to the defense of the Cyclops. Ms. Ronholt, by focusing on Odysseus’ adulteries has totally missed-out on the fact that Odysseus and his men were also thieves who gouged-out the Cyclops’ only eye! He also points-out that Ms. Ronholt never disagrees with Penelope’s constant sweatshop conditions, spinning for ten years.
	There is nothing really wrong about James Brady’s argument. He doesn’t judge Homer’s Odysseus for being a man of his times, and he only personally attacks Ms. Ronholt once by saying that she is in a “crusading mood.” He analyzes her own words, and uses them against her, without being ugly or mean. Although witty, his article could be improved by not trying to be a comedian 100% of the time, however it is his objectivity towards the subject and his holding up a mirror to Ms. Ronhot’s own scarred psyche that adds gravity to James Brady’s self-aware article in defense of Homer.
Works Citied
Brady, James. “Rising to the Defense of Homer, the Athens Homeboy.” Advertising Age 68.4 (Feb 1997): 22. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Collin County Community College District. 8 November 2005. <http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&an=9702212625>.
Homer. The Odyssey. The Norton Anthology of World Literature: Beginnings to A.D. 100. Ed. Peter J. Simon. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002. 120-225.