Difficult or not?

At first when I read that we had to investigate one thing that Shields alludes I thought this was going to be very difficult. I thought this because many times we don't even realize that the author is actually alluding while we read and I thought I was going to have to pay extreme close attention to the reading and google just about every word. I'm not saying that I didn't pay close attention but I definitely did not close read all the time because the Shields way of writing is actually very direct and it's nearly impossible to miss when he alludes.

A book that shows up constantly in Shields writing is the Iliad. Of course it does, as he states it, it's one of the first masterpieces that have been written. This caught my attention because In 9th grade the first book I had to read for Pre-AP Spanish was the Iliad. I remember I thought that I would never understand the book and that I was going to definitely need to read Spark Notes or in this case Rincondelvago once I finished, but I was wrong. Despite the years it has The Iliad, by Homer, actually ended up being one of my favourite books and well although at times it may be a tough read, it's understandable.

I therefore decided to do more research on this book because I realized that I not only read it, but I also read about it in many other texts yet I never really knew much about it's author or historical context. Obviously homecoming does appear a lot in the Iliad but I had no idea that this was an actual theme that was common among Greek Literature. This theme is actually referred to as Nostos and is one that shows up both in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Another Greek theme that I also had no idea about is Kleos, the concept of glory earned in heroic battle.

I then realized that, although it seems pretty obvious, it's extremely helpful to conduct an investigation over a book that you're reading. This is due to the fact that many times we read books independently (by this I mean not with a class) and we just don't discuss them. When this occurs we sometimes don't understand the historical context of this book or the true importance of it, meaning that we have not taken full advantage of the reading.