Way back at the beginning of summer, when I picked up my copy of Cold Mountain from a second-hand bookshop (although, it wasn’t well worn), I first noticed the quote on the back of the novel, “…Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic American Odyssey– hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.” Naturally, I was excited. Having gone over the mighty tale of the Odyssey twice for school, I am fairly familiar with the twists of the story and was ready to look for parallels between the two stories.

Ah, but that was several months ago, when I still had hope, and now the book is over and I’m left with disappointment. Aside from it being a man trekking across a harsh landscape to return to his lover, there isn’t much in common between Inman and Odysseus, but there are a couple places where the stories blend together. One of the the first little treats the audience gets to poke at the Odyssey is that the man in the bed next to Inman, Balis, is working on translating Greek. It’s not much of a reference, but enough to make readers’ allusion meter turn on.

About a page later, Frazier introduces the blind man, who immediately made me think of Tiresias, the blind prophet Odysseus meets in the Underworld. The comparison between the two establishes that the hospital is less a place of recovery and more a place of death. The title of the chapter being “The Shadow of a Crow” also hints at this with a crow commonly being seen as a symbol of death. While Inman is in the hospital, he is sitting in the shadow of death.

Since Tiresias doesn’t appear in the Odyssey until almost halfway through the saga, it would seem that the first half of Inman’s journey has already happened, but there is a reference to Odysseus’ early journey. Inman asks the blind man, “Who put out your pair of eyes?” and, with a smile on his face, the man responds, “Nobody.” (p. 8) It is a reference to, what I think, is one of the most iconic moments in the Odyssey, when Odysseus first meets the cyclops, Polyphemus, he tells him is name is Nobody. When he blinds him, Polyphemus proclaims that Nobody blinded him.

An actual reference to the Odyssey as a work of literature comes toward the end of Ada’s second chapter, “Verbs, All of Them Tiring.” Ada begins to read Ruby some of Homer’s works. Frazier doesn’t forget this, mentioning it again in Ada’s next chapter, “Ruby had grown impatient with Penelope, but she would sit of a long evening and laugh and laugh at the tribulations of Odysseus, all the stones the gods threw in his passway.” (p. 140) At first, I found Ruby’s insight funny; it was how I felt about the progress of Cold Mountain. Inman’s chapters were full of adventure and Ada’s were just incompetence and farm work. Then, I realized that was Frazier’s intent in creating a Civil War Odyssey: to take the slow pace of Penelope’s life without Odysseus and multiply it by ten because we don’t get to see how Ada would fare without Inman for ten years.

A parallel to the Odyssey story can be found in the chapter “To Live Like a Gamecock,” where Inman and his companion Veasey are taken in by a man named Junior and his wife Lila. It is not long into their stay that Lila attempts to seduce Inman. When Junior finds them, Inman tries to gather Veasey and leave, but realizes Junior had drugged them and called the Home Guard to take the deserters back. The chapter plays out much like Odysseus’ encounter with Circe. Both Inman and Odysseus come to a place that seems too nice after the hardships of their journey where a beautiful woman falls for them. They eventually realize that many other men have been in their place before and were turned into animals at the end of their stay, be it literally with magic or captured and treated like animals. Their journey might be significantly hindered, but Inman and Odysseus are the ones able to escape the fate of so many men before them.

While the similarities between the two stories are evident, they don’t match chronologically and stop toward the end of the book. Odysseus’ story ends when he wipes out the suitors trying to marry his wife and assumes his place by Penelope’s side. Inman’s story ends when he is killed after spending a couple short days of happily-ever-after with Ada. This sharp turn in the last pages of the book has a bit of a Hannah Montana moment, “Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side, It’s the climb.” Inman’s journey home and Ada learning how to be independent (as long as Ruby doing everything for her is independent) is what the book is about. A happier ending would have been nice, but it doesn’t change what the characters experienced in getting to that point.

The English teacher favorite, To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and caused an uproar at the time. The story, surrounding the lives of two siblings caught in a racist Southern town, forced the American people to look at the social injustices surrounding them. The fate of Tom Robinson, a black man imprisoned under the accusation of raping a white woman, was a story people had heard before. They knew it was wrong, but it was easier to lock up the innocent than face the real, societal issue of racism.

Mudbound is a similar novel, taking place about fifteen years after To Kill a Mockingbird in a small Southern town where racial injustice is a daily occurrence. Even with the book being published in 2008, the themes are just as valid with the recent need for the Black Lives Matter movement. With the messages presented in Mudbound and the need for America to realize there is still a way to go to fix racism, Mudbound is on its way to becoming the new To Kill a Mockingbird.

The major parallel between the two stories is that Tom Robinson and Ronsel are both black men that are punished for violating a white woman. Tom is found guilty and sent to prison where when he tries to escape is killed. The section where his death revealed feels like a punch in the face after everything he’s been through. It also diminishes his character because even though the readers know he didn’t commit the crime he was arrested for, he now is guilty of trying to escape prison.

In Mudbound, Ronsel is at least able to survive his brush with the KKK. Even now being disabled, the novel tries to look ahead showing that he will learn to cope with it. The message that there are some major problems in the world, but one day things might be better is a better outlook than the legal system is broken, abandon all hope.

One of the highlights Mudbound delivers that To Kill a Mockingbird lacked is the use of multiple perspectives. The entire story of To Kill a Mockingbird was told through the perspective of an adult looking back on her childhood and writing as though she were still a child, but Mudbound allows readers to witness the lives of six different characters cope with the situation in ways dependent on their social class, race, gender, and history. The affects of racism can be seen through the eyes of those that it’s being committed against; the reader gets to hear the internal dialogue, that the characters know it’s wrong, but can’t say that it is.

The characters also show complexity. In To Kill a Mockingbird, characters are primarily good or evil, likely due to the story being told by a young child, but that doesn’t stop the fact that people are complex. Characters in Mudbound have sets of admirable and shameful characteristics. For example, Laura appears kind in her actions, but most are done with sneakier, self-benefiting consequences that the reader only gets to see in her perspective. And all the characters, even the most understanding, are influenced by racism in some way. Jamie, Laura, and Henry all say or do racist things, even if in small gestures. Ronsel, Florence, and Hap all experience the affects of this racism and expect that is just how it is.

The characters on both sides of the racist society are juxtaposed with another. Jamie and Ronsel are both veterans that left a piece of themselves in the war-zone. Laura and Florence are both strong mothers looking to do anything for their children. Henry and Hap are both hardworking men that put most of their faith in the soil they tend rather than the family that surrounds them. This juxtaposition between the characters creates the message that all it would take is for their skin colors to switch and their entire lives would follow suit.

This was not to bash To Kill a Mockingbird, only to say that I am biased and significantly preferred Mudbound. It should still be studied because it’s important to see that society is progressing, not stagnating in the belief that the world can’t be fixed. It’s important to read more than one story to see all sides of what the world was like.

SPOILER ALERT FOR ANNE RICE’S VAMPIRE CHRONICLES

“And Mekare stared forward, expressionless, uncomprehending, the living statue; and Maharet said:

‘Behold. The Queen of the Damned.’” (Rice, Queen of the Damned, p. 457)

Do you remember around 2008 when all the Twilight-fan moms were naming their newborn baby girls Isabella? Back in the late 1990s, my own mother was a bit of a vampire fan girl herself. She read Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned when she was pregnant with me and fell in love with the name of Mekare who became the head vampire, the one that if she were to perish, would take all other vampires with her. My mom changed the spelling to MaKarie in hopes that would aid in pronunciation. It has not seemed to help because every substitute calls MaCarrie or Macaroni or Macurry or Mack-arie.

Would you believe they named my brother Sam? No mispronouncing that one; everyone knows at least one Sam. On Dr. Seuss Day, everyone would relentlessly badger him about having the the same name as Sam from Green Eggs and Ham. That phenomena is something I’ve only experienced once. When the Incredibles came out, we didn’t go the theater to see it, but got a DVD copy. We watched it as a family and when the baby sitter Kari appeared, they all looked over at me. It was such a jarring moment for my five year old self. I’d never had the same name as any character before.

I feel like my first name is so ingrained as a part of my identity in way that I don’t feel about my common middle and last name. My parents have asked me a couple of times if I’m interested in legally changing my name to Karie. I entertain the idea for a moment; mostly only my extended family refers to me as MaKarie anymore, but I’m also an Anne Rice fan girl.

Because of my attachment to my own name, I name most anything of importance to me. The laptop I’m writing on I named Casja. My first laptop was named Jewlie. My first phone I named Mifune. My first piccolo was Roderick. My current piccolo is Emmelie, like Emmelie de Forest. My flute I call Freddy, like flute the horrifying children show H. R. Pufnstuf. My car is named October Storm.

With inanimate objects, I can name them whatever I please and it seems to fit. I have more recently learned that when naming a pet it’s not as easy. We got our English mastiff four years ago and promptly named him Porthos, as my dad has always wanted a dog with that name. I advocated for this name as well, but my brother was incapable of pronouncing it and demanded we change it to Gordon, like his lifelong hero, Gordon Freeman. It was so, for about a day, then our mom called him Boogie, and it stuck. The monstrous snuggle-bug was summarized perfectly by the name Boogie.

You think we would have learned from his horrid original misnaming, but when I got a cat a couple months later I wanted to name her Miyuki like the cat from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Once again, the name didn’t stick and my mom saved the day by renaming her Katniss, because the starving kitten we rescued off the street grew up to be a savage huntress, like the famous Hunger Games champion.

So, when I got a dog for my birthday, I gave up on trying to name my pets and allowed my mom to name her. The shelter said her name was originally Bella, but as previously stated, everyone and their dog is named Bella. My mom decided on Luci and I approved and made it Lucibel to keep part of her original name, because I think it’s important to remember that she lived a very different life before we adopted her.

My mom has an affinity for names with that “lu” sound in it, having a Lou cat, Lou fish, Lu(ther) dog, niece Lou, and Aunt Lou, for which Luci’s name was inspired. Being a namesake is one of the most powerful aspects a name can have, which is why family names are very common things. That’s why my brother was named Sam, like the long like of Samuels before him. My grandfather desperately wanted to have a grandchild named after him, but my mother was his only child. I’m sure she would have gladly named a child Michael after him, had she not married a man with the last name Myers. So, instead she named a dog Mike-Ro, because he was micro-sized, and said that was as close as he would get to having a namesake through her.

While my first name is based on a book, my middle name, Lynn, is a namesake for a passed friend of the family. People seem to either hate their middle name or exclusively go by it, but I don’t feel strongly either way. I dislike it for being about as common as Marie or Nicole, but being named for someone else makes me feel like I’m carrying on some sort of legacy, even though I never met her.

The idea of namesakes influenced my name choice when I took Spanish my eighth grade year. I’m sure you recall from your first year of whatever foreign language you decided to study and abandon after the required two years that you get to pick a new name for yourself in that language. When I presented with a list of names, I picked Verónica because it is my grandmother’s name and she always believed it wasn’t a very common name. Also, partly because I am an nerd for Heathers like how a teenage girl in the late eighties would be.

The next year I took Mandarin Chinese. The teacher had us write down what we wanted our name to mean in English and she would translate it into Chinese. I had scoured the wide, wide web for years to find out if MaKarie meant anything and eventually found out it came from the Greek word “makar,” which meant blessed, so that’s what I wrote down. It took a little bit of explanation across the language barrier, but she translated it to 祝福 zhùfú, which more directly means “to wish luck,” but I still love it and she said she thought it was a very good name.

I think having names across different language expands your identity, so I gave my cat the name 早上 zăoshang, which means means “morning”, because when I wake up every morning, she is sitting outside the kitchen door, meowing to be fed. And, Luci is 晚上wănshang, meaning “evening,” because she sleeps in my bed every night.

So, MaKarie Lynn Myers summarizes me better than any list of my interests and hobbies ever could. Most people begin their introduction with their name and that’s all it is, a specific sound they recognize is used when referring to them, but a name is so much more than that. It is the one thing that can entirely define a person, because a name speaks for the entirety of a person, not a single aspect.

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