Son of Nobody
Son of Nobody purports to be a PhD dissertation offering a translation and commentary on fragments of a Trojan War epic. Hence, pages are split between poetry on top and footnotes below. Unlike the Iliad, this poem focuses on common soldiers, particularly Psoas, a cheesemaker-turned-soldier.
Psoas describes starvation, filth, and disdain from aristocratic warriors. The powerful shut out the lowly from riches/loot. Above all, Psoas misses his wife and children. The Iliad is often interpreted as undercutting the heroic ethos of glory through war in a humane refocusing of the epic tradition, so Martel’s eloquent message of the futility and mendaciousness of war is not new to this material, but his centering of the common man is.
The footnotes contain explanations that bridge readers unfamiliar with Homer. More importantly, they carry the story of the fictional Canadian at Oxford piecing together his epic – a composite other academics don’t accept, offering an interesting interpretive angle. Like the Greeks, he leaves behind family, a wife and daughter. At the start, he tells us that he failed them. Conversations and scene fragments reveal this emotional core, which parallels losses within both the soldiers’ lives and the myths. One example: “Gail stared hard at me. ‘Really? The good dad thinks sailing off to Troy will solve our problems? How did that work out for the Greeks?’”
Martel’s engagement with the ancient world and the Iliad itself is the less informed and sophisticated aspect of this innovative work. But as something new, Martel’s experiment with epic engages the reader and resonates with poignancy. Its exploration of abuse of the common man by the wealthy and powerful—a remarkably apt theme these days—is especially intriguing. As a meditation on loss, it frequently rings profound.
