“Did Odysseus know his wife and son? Wouldn’t they be estranged all these years later? Why would he perpetuate so much violence on his return and kill all the suitors? Gatsby also doesn’t fit back into society. His name, his status in West Egg, is suspect. In pursuing Daisy, he enrages Tom. Like Odysseus, his fortunes are based on deception, he overreacts and mishandles key situations, and he is driven by this unrequited longing.”

For a final time, Oglesby moved to poke a snoring Jay Blaylock in the ribs with the driver, but then shook his head and left him among the lotus-eaters.

“Gentlemen, the hero at rest is a flawed, sad figure. This is the great irony that Homer and Fitzgerald both realized: when the hero comes home, he still finds himself in exile.”

Oglesby threw back his shoulder and snuck a quick peek at the classroom clock.

“All right, how dull it is to pause there, but we have fifteen minutes before final prayer service.” Oglesby pulled notebooks from his army bag. “I’m passing back your journals, and we have one last bloodletting ceremony before I pronounce you upperclassmen.”

Oglesby whisked around the classroom, dropping journals, muttering cryptic insults as he went.

“The marginal Mr. McGhee, who never stayed within the lines . . .

“Basho Deangelis, the master of the hundred-word haiku. Not a syllable more or less . . .

“To Carthage burning, Mr. Coleman. Using your journal for rolling papers does not impress me.

“Master of the useless arts Malone . . .”

Without further comment, Oglesby flung a yellow spiral notebook to the back row. Dan caught it on a backhand and struggled to read his teacher’s rush as any indicator. So he scanned his last journal entries, looking for red pen. Dan had pulled out all the stops: he wrote a wistful, dramatic monologue from the point of view of Telemachus, drew a cartoon about a misunderstood paramecium that saves the universe, and composed a Dylan rip-off ballad (like questions floating on the breeze) about everybody being hypocrites, run through a tundish of Gerard Manley Hopkins (the thorny tendril vined and tangled with my thoughts). Dan found a check-plus for a C. S. Lewis–inspired essay titled “The Snake Crawled West”: “Man brought the snake out of Eden, and discovered what he thought to be the whole world, and once he conquered it, he only then realized that he had been conquered by the snake itself.” He also wrote obliquely about his mother and father—in an entry called “Lost in the Supermarket”—with some pain and worry there. Dan flipped to the final page and Oglesby’s note: “Well done. Let’s talk about what’s next.”

Dan looked up from his desk as Oglesby pulled out his grade book.

“As last time, the top three semester averages are eligible for Rattus norvegicus induction. The first candidate, with a grade point of ninety-seven point one, is Mr. Boudreaux.”