Name: Date: Period:
Homer’s The Odyssey
Answer the following questions based on your reading in the classroom textbook. Answers should be given in complete sentences.
“The Cyclops in the Ocean” (p. 672)
1. What does the comparison of a tropical storm to the Cyclops suggest?
2. Ulysses is the Roman name of Odysseus. What might have happened if the Cyclops in the Odyssey had not met Odysseus (Ulysses)? What does the allusion to the Odyssey imply about the tropical storm?
3. Why is the metaphor of the Cyclops appropriate for describing a tropical storm?
“The Enchantress Circe” (p. 673-675)
1. Simile: What comparison does Odysseus make to emphasize the strange gentleness of the wild beasts’ behavior?
2. Circe, like Calypso, is first seen at her loom, singing and weaving. What inference could you make about women in ancient Greece from this fact?
3. Lines 549-583, what have the men done to deserve being turned into pigs?
How does Circe violate the laws of hospitality?
“The Land of the Dead” (p. 675-677)
1. Line 603, who is Odysseus referring to when he uses the term sovereign Death?
2. In Book I at the beginning of the epic (p. 651), Homer reveals how the story ends. According to this excerpt from Book I, do Odysseus’s men heed Teiresias’s warning (Line 630-633), or does the seer’s prophecy come true?
3. So far, everything Teiresias says has already been recounted by Homer in Book I. Does knowing in advance what happens lessen your enjoyment of the epic?
4. Odysseus often solves problems by cunning rather than physical force. Brainstorm occasions in daily life when people may be tempted to use physical force to solve a problem, even though they might more easily (and more successfully) solve the problem in a nonviolent way. Complete the chart below with a list of three (3) problems. Then suggest three (3) ways to solve each problem in a nonviolent way.
Problem(s) / Solution(s)1. / a.
b.
c.
2. / a.
b.
c.
3. / a.
b.
c.