By now you should have finished Book 1. Now, what is it that is unusual about the text and its characters? Let's begin by looking at the presentation of the gods. Remember that Greece at this time was a polytheistic society. Do the gods seem"godlike"? Are they omniscient and omnipotent (two vocabulary words you will see of the quiz)? Who is the hero of the epic? These are several of the questions we'll examine on Monday and Tuesday. In addition, we'll examine a major theme of the Odyssey, and that is the Greek concept of hospitality, or xenia(1), and how it marks or drives much of the action of the story. To get a head start - examine the text and find examples of when hospitality is discussed and highlighted. What does it say about the characters? Finally, we'll look for evidence of foreshadowing in the text, so I suggest you take out your notes and make sure you can identify foreshadowing.
Essays are due on Monday and make sure you include your outlines, and drafts.
(1) You'll notice this link is to a Wikipedia post, which is very unusual for me. I wanted to point out that you need to be very, very careful with Wikipedia because it is constantly changing and is not always reliable. I would prefer you not use this as a source unless you verify its content elsewhere (you 'd probably be better off using this other source), are absolutely confident you know its content is correct (as I do from my past work on this issue), and note the date you cited it. Wikipedia post can be changed at anytime and there is an issue with pranks and malicious changes, so the Wiki entry you cite might be different the next hour, day, week...you get the message. Having said all this, I thought the Wiki post I read on this date was excellent and I doubt this is an entry that is a focus for pranks.
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