CW9 Reading Journal

Reading Journal: Averno

In which time period is Louise Gluck’s Averno set? What is the tone of this book? Describe the narrator(s) and what is of value to them? What kind of relationship does the Persephone narrator have with the earth in Gluck’s work? Cite at least one passage to back up your argument. To what does the final verse on page 16 refer? Cite a passage in the text where the narrator second guesses her own voice by reconsidering the way in which to describe something. Why would an author show such a thing? What are some key differences between Part I and II of the book; how is Persephone the Wander figured differently in each? How do you understand the ancient myth differently after reading Gluck’s interpretation?

Averno seems to be set in the present. The overall tone of the book seems to be introspective: one woman’s analysis of her life, how she got there, and what is next. There are several narrators in the book; all seem to be aspects of the author, perhaps her self imagined at different ages or points in her life. Another thought I had was that the narrators represent the author in different stages of innocence. I identified two main narrators in the piece. The first was the author, a modern woman, and the other was an absolute innocent, a young girl who is referred to in the retelling of the Persephone myth. Her narration is used to tell the author’s young life, and the book, on the large scale, seems to be about the loss of innocence with the Persephone myth as the catalyst to discuss the idea. The Persephone narrator’s relationship to the earth is a metaphorical parallel of the relationship in the myth. The earth is like a mother figure in this book as evidenced by the passage, “From our kitchen garden/ you could see the mountains/ snow covered, even in summer/ I remember peace of a kind/ I never knew again” (29). The author talks about herself as a child here. The motherly embrace of nature parallels the Persephone myth, lending support to my argument. The last verse on page 16 refers to Hawthorne’s version of the Persephone myth where she eats pomegranate seeds in Hades and must spend half the year there because of that. The top of page 17 shows the technique of the author second-guessing herself over the word “home.” I think the author does this to give the text more of an introspective feel. A key difference between parts one and two that I noticed is how part one seems to describe the past and part two describes the future. Persephone: The Wanderer in part one was interpreted through the eyes of someone who had never known motherhood, whereas part two was seen from the eyes of a mother. Part one talks about rationality and scholarship whereas part two is more an emotional excursus. This book has made me see the Persephone story as a tale of the loss of innocence. Not only that, but, also, it gave Persephone a voice. Before the story was “an argument between the mother and the lover—/ the daughter is just meat.”