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GONZAGA – Odyssey Book One study questions – “Athena Inspires the Prince”
Carefully read all of Book One. (Don’t just hunt for the answers.) You may handwrite your
responses or you may type them, but do your own work. Use complete sentences.
1. From what ancient city is “the man of twists and turns” returning from? What has he been
doing there?
2. In line 11, why is “Launch out on his story” a more appropriate phrase than “Begin his
story”? (Hint – what kinds of things get “launched,” and how are those things involved in
this story?)
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3. As the story begins, who is holding Odysseus captive? Where?
4. Beginning on line 34, Zeus is remembering a Trojan War homecoming story. Agamemnon
(Atrides) is a Greek warrior. The Greeks angered Artemis, so she prevented the fleet from
sailing until Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, in order to obtain favorable winds.
While he is away at the war, his wife, Clytemnestra, takes a lover, Aegisthus. When
Agamemnon comes home, they team up to murder Agamemnon and his concubine, Cassandra.
To avenge the death of his father, Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, murders his
own mother and her lover.
Why is there a reference to this homecoming story so early in The Odyssey?
5. Why is Poseidon preventing Odysseus’s return home?
6. Disguised as Mentes, Athena visits Odysseus’s palace in Ithaca. What are Penelope’s suitors
doing there? What is Telemachus hoping for?
7. Give some specific examples of how Telemachus tries hard to act as a good host toward the
disguised Athena.
8. What very important piece of news does Telemachus learn at lines 226-231?
9. Explain how line 234 (“though I am hardly a seer or know the flights of birds”) is an example
of dramatic irony.
10. What quest does Mentes (Athena) recommend that Telemachus undertake?
11. In lines 341-342, what does Telemachus have in common with Danny and Reuven?
12. Why can’t Penelope bear to hear the bard Phemius’s song?
13. In the conversation with his mother, what does Telemachus say that reinforces the comingof-age theme?
14. Who is Eurycleia? What details about her add to the characterization of both Laertes
(Odysseus’s father) and his wife? What kind of household did Odysseus grow up in?
15. If you were leading discussion on Book One, what would you ask? Write your question
here.