Download The Odyssey

The Odyssey
Background Information
 Almost 3000 years ago, people who lived in
the starkly beautiful part of the world we now
call Greece were telling stories about a
great war
– Homer gathered these stories together telling
them as one unified epic
– The Iliad
– The Odyssey
 Homer’s stories probably can be traced to
historical struggles for control of the
waterway leading from the Aegean Sea to
the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea
– 1200 BC (as long ago for Homer as the
Pilgrim’s landing at Plymouth Rock is for us)
 Homer’s first epic was the ILIAD – tells of a
10 year war fought on the plains outside the
walls of a great city called Troy
– Ruins in western Turkey
– Trojan War – the people of Troy vs an alliance
of Greek kings
– The cause of the war was jealousy: Helen
abandoned her husband Menelaus (a Greek
king) and ran off with Paris (a prince of Troy)
 The ODYSSEY – the attempt of one Greek
soldier, Odysseus, to get home after the
Trojan War
– All epic poems in the Western world follow
these basic patterns
Epics & Values
 EPICS are long narrative poems that tell of
the adventures of heroes who in some way
embody the values of their civilizations
– Greeks used these poems for centuries in
schools to teach Greek virtues
– Later cultures imitated the style using their own
value systems
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Rome – AENEID
France – SONG OF ROLAND
Italy – THE DIVINE COMEDY
India – MAHABHARATA & RAMAYANA
Mali - SUNDIATA
 ILIAD – primary model for the epic of war
 ODYSSEY – the model for the epic of the
long journey
– THE WIZARD OF OZ
– STAR WARS
– ODYSSEY is the more widely read of the two
stories
The War-Story Background:
Violence & Brutality
 The ILIAD – set in the 10th and final year of
the Trojan War
– Greeks attacked Troy
– Greek kings banded together under the
leadership of Agamemnon
– 1000 ships sailed across the Aegean Sea & laid
siege to the walled city of Troy
 Greeks were eventually victorious
– Gained entrance to Troy
– Reduced the city to smoldering ruins
– Butchered all the inhabitants (took some as
slaves back to Greece)
– Achilles – greatest of the Greek warriors who
died young in the final year of the war
– Agamemnon was murdered by his unfaithful
wife when he returned from Troy
 Odysseus
– Subject of THE ODYSSEY
– Known as much for his brains as his strength
Odysseus: A Hero in Trouble
 Heroes were thought of as a special class of
aristocrats
– They were placed between the gods and
ordinary human beings
– Experienced pain & death BUT always “on top
of the world”
 Odysseus is different
– He is a hero in trouble
– We can relate to Odysseus
 THE ODYSSEY
– Melancholy & postwar disillusionment
– Odysseus – great soldier in the war but the
monsters he faces do not care about his war
record
– Ithaca lacks respect for him when he returns
 Odysseus had married Penelope in the
years before the great war
– Had one son, Telemachus
– He was still a toddler when Odysseus was
called to war
– Odysseus did not want to go to war even
though he was under treaty to do so
– Pretended to be insane to avoid going to war;
but he was quickly figured out
The Wooden-Horse Trick
 Odysseus performed extremely well as a
soldier & commander once in Troy
– He thought of the wooden-horse trick that would
be the downfall of Troy
The Ancient World & Ours
 World of Odysseus was harsh & familiar
with violence
– Act like pirates on their journey home
– Enter towns & carry off all their worldly goods
– Pots, pans, cattle, sheep
– “palaces” – elaborate mud and stone
farmhouses
A Search For Their Places in Life
 Searching for right relationships with one
another & with the people around them
– Theme
– Story begins with Telemachus who is now 20
years old
– Threatened by rude, powerful men swarming
about his own home, pressuring his mother to
marry one of them
– Men want to rob Telemachus of his inheritance
 Odysseus is stranded on an island, longing
to find a way to get back to his wife, child,
and home
– 10 years since Odysseus sailed from Troy
– 20 years since he left Ithaca
– Odysseus searching for inner peace (as we are
all in search of our true selves)
Relationships with the gods
 MYTHS – traditional stories, rooted in a
particular culture, that usually explain a
belief, a ritual, or a mysterious natural
phenomenon
– Essentially religious
 Homer is always concerned with the relationship
between humans and gods
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Homer is religious
The gods control all things
Athena, the goddess of wisdom (always w/ Odysseus)
ALTER EGO – a reflection of a hero’s best or worst
qualities
– Poseidon, god of the sea – known for arrogance and a
certain brutishness
– Odysseus himself can be violent & cruel
Who Was Homer?
 No one knows for sure!
– A blind minstrel, or singer, who came from the
island of Chios
– Just a legend?
– Too good to be true?
– Model for a class of wandering bards or
minstrels later called rhapsodes
 RHAPSODES, or “singers of tales” –
historians and entertainers as well as they
mythmakers of their time
– No written history
– No movies & no TV; no Bible or book of
religious stories
– Minstrels traveled from community to
community singing of recent events
How Were the Epics Told?
 Oral epic poets are still composing today in
Eastern Europe & other parts of the world
– ILIAD & ODYSSEY originally told aloud by
people who could not read or write
– Follow a basic story line
– Singers were very talented & worked very hard
– Audience must listen closely
 Repetition in Homeric epics
 HOMERIC or EPIC SIMILES
– Similes that compare heroic or epic events to
simple & easily understandable everyday
events
 A story as long as THE ODYSSEY (11,300
lines) would not be told at one sitting
– Summarize parts & tell the rest in detail
A Live Performance
 Imagine a large hall full of people who are freshly
bathed, rubbed with fine oils, and draped in clean
tunics
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Smell the meat being cooked over charcoal
Hear the sound of voices
Imagine wine being freely poured
See the flickering reflections of the great cooking fires &
torches that light the room
– A certain anticipation hangs in the air
– Perhaps Homer himself is in town, and will appear and
entertain tonight!