Geek Love and Olympia

When I first started reading Geek Love the first thing that caught my eye was the name of the narrator, Olympia. With the Olympics just having passed in February, my thoughts went directly to that. The Olympic competitors represent the strongest, most competitive, and elite athletes of the world: for the 17 days that the Olympics run these athletes are on the forefront of the nation’s mind as both celebrities and heroes - they are perfect in the eyes of the media and are celebrated for their skill.

Olympia was the site for the Olympics in classical times, and the Olympics were initially meant to honour Zeus (thank you Wikipedia). I found that there is an interesting parallel between honouring the perfection in Zeus with the abnormalities that are held in esteem in Geek Love. The parallel between the Zeus and the freaks in the show highlights an interesting distinction between perfection and abnormality. The constant reversal of roles that are portrayed in the novel demonstrate these distinctions by making the abnormal “normal”, and the norms something that should be looked down upon, instead of the typical view of normal being ideal and abnormal being wrong. This parallel leads the reader to question what is considered ideal and the importance that is placed on perfection.

Although the individuals competing in the Olympics represent a certain type, Geek Love’s Olympia does not fit in that category. The character of Olympia in the book is not the strongest or the elite of the carnival. In fact, she is displaced in her family and in her surroundings. In the novel, the freaks are highlighted as the stars. Olympia is the most “normal” of the freaks. Her deformity is basic and does not carry the same weight as the abnormalities her siblings possess. She is the only one that doesn’t have her own show in the carnival, because she is average and therefore uninteresting. By giving her a name that should emphasize Oly as being elite and special, it enhances her normality. It is another way for her inferiorities to be emphasized. Her name emphasizes what she is not, what her parents aspired her to be, and how she didn’t live up to those expectations of grandeur.