Raskolnikov shows a more timid, or maybe even calculating side of himself through his dialogue with Porfiry. The elipses might be read as a stutter -- perhaps Raskolnikov is having trouble getting to his point about Lazarus and God/resurrection because of the guilt he feels -- or perhaps it could be read as careful and purposeful pause in his prose to create tension and heighten suspense for what he is about to say. Porfify himself stumbles over his words, saying "I be-believe", perhaps characterizing him as unsure in what he himself has to say. It's also cool to see allusions to the Bible and God knowing how devout Dostoevsky was.

The direct address to the reader during the prologue was most interesting to me, ex. "...for you are neither his kin nor his friend, and you have a soul in your body and a will...". I found myself arguing against Quixote's stepfather in my head, proposing that while I may not know not know him personally he certainly doesn't know me at all either. How would his stepfather know that I have a soul and will as free as anyone's, that I'm in my house, "where [I] am lord"? Maybe it's indicative of the assumptions Cervantes has to make because of the socioeconomic barriers to literacy that plagued Europe -- but he also later includes the theme of books as a tool for liberation. It's ironic, and I wonder how we can reconcile this paradox.

I found Asios’ speech extremely interesting, as there are an abundance of literary devices in this epic simile that caught my attention after rereading it. For one, the motif of a person (in this case, Asios) “beat[ing] on both thighs with his hands” seems to reoccur later in book 15, line 113 when Ares “struck against both his big thighs with the flats of his hands”, in book 15, line 397 when Patroklos “groaned aloud then and struck himself on both thighs with the flats of his hands”, and AGAIN in book 16, line 125 when Achilleus “struck his hands against both of his thighs”. Perhaps this motif was included to draw parallels between Asios, Ares, Patroklos, and Achilleus, who are depicted as non-assimilators who actually question the chain of command. The inclusion of an epic simile that compares the Achaians to “bees” immediately brought me back to the epic simile in Book 2 that we analyzed earlier in class. There is parallelism in the description of a hollowness in the Achaians in both books - in Book 2, the Achaians are described as “bees that issue forever...from the hollow in the stone” and in Book 12, the Achaians are described as bees that “will not abandon the hollow house they have made”. In addition to the alliteration of “hollow house”, perhaps Homer included these parallels to draw attention to the depressed and empty emotional state of the Achaians after years of war. Lastly, I recognized the use of a euphemism in line 172, when Asios describes the length to which the Achaian soldiers would go to fight for their children - he says they are “unwilling to give back from the gates, until they have killed their men, or are taken.” Using the word “taken” is a much less offensive substitute for the word “killed”. Perhaps Homer included this euphemism to express Asios’ sympathy with the Achaians, or at least his general non-assimilation with the rest of the Trojans.