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The Odyssey Study Guide: Part III
Answer the following questions using your Literature book. Answers may be found on pages 12241237.
CIRCE, THE GRACE OF THE WITCH
1. What does the sailors’ opening of the bull’s-hide bag suggest about their relationship with Odysseus?
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2. To emphasize the strange gentleness of the wild beasts’ behavior, what does Odysseus compare them to
in lines 5-8?
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3. Like Calypso, when we first glimpse her, Circe is at her loom, singing and weaving. Based on this, what
inference might you make about women in ancient Greece?
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4. At what other point in the epic have some of Odysseus’s men eaten something that made them lose their
desire for home?
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5. What has happened to the men in lines 32-36? Will Eurylochus somehow rescue them?
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6. Hermes helps Odysseus when he’s on Calypso’s island. What other role has Hermes played in The
Odyssey?
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THE LAND OF THE DEAD
7. Whom is Odysseus referring to when he uses the term “sovereign Death”?
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8. Which god is Tiresias referring to in lines 80-83?
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9. Remember Homer’s words at the beginning of the epic, when he reveals how the story ends. According
to Homer, will Odysseus’s men heed Tiresias’s warning, or does the seer’s prophecy come true?
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10. Much of what Tiresias says has already been recounted by Homer in the beginning of the poem. Does
this lessen your enjoyment of the epic to know what happens in advance? Explain.
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THE SIRENS; SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS
11. In line 6, what is the meaning of the word innocent?
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12. How is Scylla described?
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13. How is Charybdis described?
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14. From what you know of Odysseus, do you think he will take the risk of listening to the Sirens’ song?
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15. Do you agree with Circe’s advice that it is better to sacrifice six men than to risk losing them all?
Explain.
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16. Who else warned Odysseus to leave Helios’s cattle alone?
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17. Why does Odysseus put wax in his men’s ears?
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18. Why does Odysseus try to gesture with his eyebrows for the men to untie him?
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19. What does it mean that the Sirens have dropped under the sea rim?
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20. Read lines 141-148. Is it necessary for great leaders to inspire their men? Explain.
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21. What do you think of Odysseus’s decision not to tell his men about the danger of Scylla? Is his
silence justified? Why or why not?
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22. What does Odysseus’s failure to remember Circe’s warning about the uselessness of weapons reveal
about his self-image?
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23. What things are being compared in lines 193-197? What is the effect of this comparison?
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24. Do you agree with Odysseus that this is the worst sight he has seen on his travels? Why or why not?
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25. What have Teiresias and Circe told Odysseus about Helios’s cattle?
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