Download EPISODE 12 – ODYSSEUS TAKES CHARGE

Episode 12 – Odysseus takes charge
There are two pause points in this final episode, one just before the Greeks attack the city
of Troy and the other after the brutal death of the baby Astyanax. These are significant and
dramatic events. You might like to stop after each one to discuss it with your class; or you
could decide to continue up to the second pause and stop there. The death of the baby is
shocking. The children will be able to attend fully to the very last part of the story if they
have had time to express their feelings earlier.
Illustration for this episode: The wooden horse
Total running time: 13:51
Summary
Odysseus’ big idea (⌚ 4:29)
CD 3 track 5
With their best warrior dead, the Greeks realise they cannot take Troy by force alone. Odysseus, famed for
his cunning, devises a plan to capture the city. He orders a large wooden horse to be built. This is left outside
the city walls as an offering to the goddess Athene. The Greeks then sail away out of sight. The Trojans think
the Greeks have sailed back to Greece and rejoice in their victory. They take the wooden horse into Troy and
begin their celebrations.
A couple reunited (⌚ 4:34)
CD 3 track 6
That night out of the wooden horse emerge Greek warriors, led by Odysseus. They open the city gates and let
in the rest of the Greek army who have sailed back under the cover of darkness. The capture and destruction of
Troy by the Greeks begins. Menelaus seeks out Paris and Helen. He kills Paris, but as soon as he sees his wife
Helen again, he is spellbound by her beauty and she also falls back in love with him. They are reunited in love.
Agamemnon kills Priam as he sleeps and other Greeks, bent on revenge, snatch baby Astyanax from
Andromache and throw him from the battlements.
A dream comes true (⌚ 4:48)
CD 3 track 7
The gods, looking down on the destruction of Troy, are appalled. Zeus sends thunderbolts to bring towers
and walls crashing down on the Greeks. As Hecuba, along with other Trojan women, is dragged away into
slavery, she looks at the burning city and realises that the dream she had when she was expecting Paris has
now come to pass.
The story ends with Eris, the goddess of arguing, reflecting that everything has happened ‘because of one
golden apple’.
Starting points
• Give the titles only of each episode to groups of children, to arrange in the correct
order. Each group should report back to the whole class, who can discuss the
ordering of the events that have lead up to this point in the story. This will help
refresh the children’s memories and remind them of the human cost of this war.
• Again, working in groups, give children all the episode summaries up to, and
including Episode 11. Ask them to name individual characters who have died so far.
(Cygnus, Patroclus, Hector, Achilles.) Make a class list and add to this at the end of
the story.
1 War with Troy: The Story of Achilles
Follow-up
Now that you have heard the complete story, you may prefer to discuss this last episode
in relation to what has gone before, coming back to the episode-specific questions
later. Because it seems more appropriate to discuss many of these important questions
immediately the story ends, they appear at the beginning of the suggestions below, rather
than at the end (as in previous episodes).
Further Activities
• The war lasted ten years and caused dreadful suffering and loss of life. The beautiful
city of Troy was destroyed. Do children think it was worth the struggle and the pain?
If they had been there, what would they have done as Greeks, or as Trojans?
• What does Odysseus mean by “this business will end just the way it began”
(transcript p. 1). (The war will end, as it began, with a horse. Odysseus is referring
to the butchered stallion, mentioned in Episode 2, on which Helen’s suitors swore
their oath; and to the horse he will build to outwit the Trojans.)
• Is it possible for someone to feel jealousy for ten years?
• Ask the class to imagine the conversation between Athene and Hera as they witness
the murder of Paris. Write this as a dialogue between the two goddesses.
• Write a monologue for Aphrodite as she watches Paris die. Paris chose her over the
other two Hera and Athene: so is all this suffering her fault?
• What does Aphrodite do to make things better? (She pulls the arrow from Helen’s
heart.) Could she have done this earlier? If so, why didn’t she? What difference
would it have made?
• How did the Greeks behave? How does Odysseus think the Greek have behaved?
(Odysseus is appalled and thinks that they have gone mad.)
• Discuss Andromache’s fate. (She has lost her parents, her brothers, her husband,
her baby son, her brother-in-law, her father-in-law; and now she and her mother-inlaw are taken off as slaves.)
• Show the class a copy of Picasso’s painting, Guernica. Discuss their response to this
and the possible reasons why Picasso painted it. (It was his horror of events in the
Spanish Civil War.)
• Give out transcripts of two episodes of the story, to each of six groups. Ask the
groups to read their episodes carefully, to find striking visual images. Use these as
the stimulus for paintings/drawings of War with Troy, based on Picasso’s painting
Guernica. Ask children to think of different titles for their works.
• Display children’s paintings/drawings and use them as a stimulus for retelling the
story to children or adults.
War with Troy: The Story of Achilles 2