INTRODUCING
The Odyssey
MODERN DAY HEROES
How do you define a hero or heroine?
Create a list of character traits heroes and heroines possess. (At least 5)
Choose an individual from our society who represents or embodies your
definition and character traits.
HOMER
• Author of the Illiad and the Odyssey
• Homer gathered countless stories, put them together, and told them as one
unified epic (late 8 th or early 7th century B.C.)
• Little is truly known about his life!
• Epic: long narrative poems that tell of the adventures of heroes who in
some way embody the values of their civilizations
• The Illiad – epic of war
• The Odyssey – epic of the long journey
THE ODYSSEY
• Odyssey – a series of adventurous journeys usually marked by many
changes of fortune.
• Greek word Odusseia– “the story of Odysseus”
• Here’s the story: A Greek hero of the Trojan War took ten years to find his
way back from Troy to his home on the island of Ithaca, off the western
coast of mainland Greece.
• What are we dealing with? Adventurous journeys, a change of fortunes,
and a hero’s return to even more adventures and dangers.
• The Trojan War… for kids
BACKGROUND
The Trojan War is set up in the Illiad. The Greeks attacked Troy to avenge the insult
suffered by Menelaus, kind of Sparta, when his wife, Helen, ran off with Paris, a young
prince of Troy. The Greek kings banded together under the leadership of Agamemnon, the
brother of Menelaus. In a thousand ships, they sailed across the Aegean Sea and encircled
the walled city of Troy.
Here’s the deal – the audience of the Odyssey would have known this war story,
just like you all know the story of the Royals fighting their way through the
World Series. They would know all about the greatest Greek Warrior, Achilles,
just like you all know of Alex Gordon.
A HERO IN TROUBLE
The Odyssey is a story marked by melancholy and a feeling of postwar disillusionment.
In Homer’s day, heroes were a special class of aristocrats placed between the gods
and ordinary human beings.
• Heroes experienced pain and death
• They were always sure of themselves
• They were always “on top of the world”
Odysseus was a hero in trouble!
• Lost in a world of difficult choices
• Cope with unfair authority figures
• Worked very hard to get what he wanted
WORDS TO KNOW
• Valor
• Affliction
• Baleful
• Din
• Glutton
• Rapine
• Eligible
• Havoc
• Lavish
• Audacity
• Wield
• Virtuous
• Lucid
• Prudence
• Libation
• Interrogate
• Precedence
• Harangue
• Insidious
• Pauper
• Scion
• Desolation
• Maleficent
• Infallible
• Bestial
• Feign
• Promontory
• Ruffian
• Chastise
• Versatile
• Malignant
• Derelict
• Succumb
• Remiss
• Buffet
• Averse
• Aloof
• Deference
• Auspicious
• Provender
INTERESTING LANGUAGE
(PRONUNCIATION GUIDE)
CONTEXT
OVERVIEW
REFLECTION
1. Lost in a world of difficult choices
2. Cope with unfair authority figures
3. Work very hard to get what we want
Can you relate to these challenges? Choose one or combine these
challenges. Reflect on your experience (s) in your notes.
CHARACTERS
BOOK 1
Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked
the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose
manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to
save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his
men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god
Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these
things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.
So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got safely home except Ulysses,
and he, though he was longing to return to his wife and country, was detained by the
goddess Calypso, who had got him into a large cave and wanted to marry him. But as years
went by, there came a time when the gods settled that he should go back to Ithaca; even
then, however, when he was among his own people, his troubles were not yet over;
nevertheless all the gods had now begun to pity him except Neptune, who still persecuted
him without ceasing and would not let him get home.
ON-GOING REFLECTIONS
1. Is Odysseus a hero or a zero?
2. Who faces greater challenges: Penelope, Telemachus, or
Odysseus?
1. Who is the character with the most redeeming qualities?