Ms. Miller – Eng 9H
Book V Class Notes: Odysseus – Nymph and Shipwreck
Directions: As you take notes, cite specific lines whenever possible.
1. Discuss what it means to be immortal.
2. Odysseus rejects Calypso’s offer to make him immortal. What idea does this action underscore?
“In giving his hero the option of becoming immortal, the poet has depicted as emphatically as possible Odysseus’
renewed commitment to his given lot. He is a mortal, a human being, whose fate it is to die. Immortality is not for
him, nor, Homeric poetry suggests, for any man. The trials and tribulations of the gods are trivial precisely because
they live forever. By a harsh paradox, it is death, the fact that one will not always be alive, which makes life
important. In the course of his seven-year stay with Calyspo, Odysseus has found, despite the real temptation, that
the idyllic round of pleasure that she offers holds no meaning. At best, it represents a vegetable existence. By the
time we first encounter him, therefore, he has come to reject her offer of immortality and has committed himself to
living life with all its suffering to the fullest.” (Tracey 33)
3. Book V focuses on a life outside of civilization. Calypso lives outside of civilization, “…salty waste so
vast, / so endless… no city of men in sight, and not a soul” (V.112-114).
a. Juxtaposition (combination) of the natural beauty of the environment with the darkness of
Calypso’s dwelling: “Why, even a deathless god / who came upon that place would gaze in
wonder, / heart entranced with pleasure. Hermes the guide, / the mighty giant-killer, stood
there, spellbound… / But once he’d had his fill of marveling at it all / he briskly entered the
deep vaulted cavern” (V. 81-86).
4. In a sense, Odysseus’ seven year stay with Calypso been a sort of living death. “No city of men in
sight” (V.113). This idea is emphasized with the suggestion of his rebirth when he is on the raft and
fighting for survival. ( ***Telemachus is on a journey to find his identity. Odysseus is on a journey to
secure his identity.)
a. Raft serves as a womb
b. Waves serve as contractions.
c. Scarf serves as the umbilical cord.
d. In literature, the emergence from the water often symbolizes rebirth.
e. When one is born, he is naked; Odysseus is naked when he emerges from water.
5. In Greek the verb Kalypsato means “to bury.”
a. “Calypso has other important associations with death. Her very name is derived from the verb
Kalypto, which is a common word in Greek for burying, and her island is located most
strikingly ‘where the navel of the sea is.’ For the Greeks the navel marked the entrance to the
underworld…” (Tracey 33).
6. Kleos means “fame on the lips of men.” A hero without kleos is nothing. As Hermes points out to
Calypso, she lives far away from the “cities of men.” If Odysseus was to stay with Calypso, far away
from men, he would not be able to achieve Kleos. He would suffer a loss of identity and death (a living
death that Calypso offers).