Study Questions (1): Odyssey (Homer)

Humanities 1010

Lange / Fall 1998

Choose one question or raise your own issue to discuss in a total of one page. Make sure you do not repeat yourself. Please type your answer.

Due Date: September 14, 1998 (Monday)

1. What is an epic (in your own words)? Notice how the story opens. Who sings the story? And who is responsible for the story?

2. Notice the first glimpse of the gods on Olympus. What is their view of humans? What role does the individual responsibility play in a cosmos ordered by the gods?

3. What is the role of singers such as Demodokus in court? Look at Odysseus's comments (8.495 etc.) about singers. Is singing/poetry a function of a censored society?

4. What is Athena's relation to Odysseus? See 7.19 for a description of "her love's expedient." And what do you make of Athena's fears about Penelope (13.387-400)? Is she jealous of Odysseus's mortal love?

5. Read Odysseus's commentary to Eurykleia (22.409 etc.) about slain men. What kind of rationalization is this for war and murder?

6. The passages about the slave women are some of the most disturbing in the text. Why does Telemachos hang them? How is this a more "just" end for them?

7. Melanthios receives very harsh punishment and cruel death. What kind of lesson is put forward for the serving class through his death?

8. What can you say about Odysseus's treatment of his nurse (19.499 etc.). What is his fear? How powerful of a figure is Eurykleia?

9. Why does Odysseus allow the harper and the poet to survive the slaughter in the great hall. What form of communication and censorship might be promoted here?

10. Trace the development of Telemachus. What is the result of Odysseus's absence from his home in Ithaca? Why doesn't Telemachus attack the suitors? If the Odyssey could be seen as "the coming of age" story of Telemachus, what seems necessary for T. to do before he can become a man? What inspires T's rage in Book 20?

11. Discuss the conflict between civilization and barbarism.