#also if anyone wants readings about the odyssey that give you mash worms then hmu

[hardoncaulfield]

I'm a few days late making this but bc of the mashdyssey posting I thought I'd post the uhh clothing theory that's been boiling my brain for some weeks now. These posts gave me the initial worms & then I got to thinking about the symbolism of the pink henley in terms of BJ/Odysseus parallels. Because clothing in the odyssey is so incredibly important, like one scholar says: "For Homeric society what a person wore represented in a real, not just a symbolic, sense what he was. A king without his proper raiment is not a king.."¹ Clothing is implicated at every level of Odysseus' journey —

[Both inserts²]

But Odysseus doesn't disguise himself, is the thing, Athena does it for him, or else his clothes are gifts from women:

[See this post.]

So, in the odyssey Clothing becomes representative of identity to such an extent that it even qualifies a person's status as a person — when Odysseus washes up naked on Phaeacia he covers himself in leaves, an inhuman covering that makes him less-than-human. So when Nausikaa offers him clothes she is reintroducing him into society and, specifically, offering him a role in that society as her potential spouse.

& this is where the red party comes in — Hawkeye becomes a sort of anti-nausikaa, he resents the clothes that tie him to the society/institution he is part of and make him complicit in the army's violence. And, quite different from the situation in the odyssey where the clothing-gift orginates with Nausikaa and brings Odysseus into society by offering him a role in that society, here BJ gifts Hawkeye clothes he himself wears (and continues to wear for the rest of their time together) & rather than the clothing-gift representing a role inside the established order, BJ continuing to wear red is him saying that he's with Hawkeye against the lot of them. He'll stand with Hawkeye outside society. & this is sort of the crux of him going from being an excellent Nobody [I sent this ask but was too chicken to ask off anon, look at me now 😔✌] to acknowledging that he's changing and that change might not be all bad. (Thanks @flintism for pointing this one out)

& I think it's interesting to overlay this with that moment from Odysseus' homecoming — the triumphant moment when he throws off his beggar's disguise and stands there completely naked and therefore completely himself — where we see that it is only because he can claim his identity that he is able to claim his nostos. & I don't have a conclusion for this but I think it's interesting to consider how BJ changes his clothes because of his love for Hawkeye in light of Odysseus' having to prove himself to be himself before he can go home and also that scene from book 19 where Penelope recognises Odysseus by the clothes he wore when he went away to war even while she fails to recognise that the man himself is sitting in front of her — much 2 consider

1. Studies in the Odyssey. B. Fenik

2. Clothing and Identity in the Odyssey: The Case of Penelope's Web. Naoko Yamagata