Aim: How does The Odyssey, Book X further enhance our understanding of Odysseus’ plight; through his journey as a hero?
For the Do Now question, we had to describe a time we felt obligated to do something.
One thing that people are obligated to do is hold the door open for someone passing by.
Epithets: An adjective or a descriptive phrase that expresses a quality characteristic of the person or thing mentioned.
Examples of epithets:
Odysseus: The great tactician
Athena: The clear eyed goddess
The first problem Odysseus faces is when his crew tears open the bag containing winds, making them stranded in the sea. They row to Laestrygonians where some of its inhabitants eat some of his men. While fleeing, they throw rocks towards their ships and Odysseus’ ship is the only one remaining. A witch goddess named Circe turns some of his men into pigs. Hermes, disguised as a man, gives Odysseus a herb to protect him from Circe’s spells. After defeating her, she becomes Odysseus’ lover.
Both Circe’s Island and The Land of the Lotus Eaters treated Odysseus and his crew poorly. However both of their actions are pretty much equivalent to each other and what they did wasn’t extremely bad as no one dies.
Circe invited Odysseus to bed after she failed to turn him into a pig. He makes a deal that he’ll do so if he turns his men back into humans from pigs.
Odysseus was obligated to save his men as they were trusting of Odysseus to do whatever he says and they both helped each other in times of need. Also many of his men’s lives have been lost before and he doesn’t want to lose all of them.
Hermes has used his trickery on both because he allowed Circe to prepare for Odysseus and gave Odysseus an easy way to defeat her.
Epithets in Book 10:
Aeolus: the king the master of all winds
Circe: the lustrous one
Odysseus: most cursed man alive
Reflection: In this lesson, we learned about obligation and epithets. There are many examples of both in The Odyssey Book 10. I learned about these things to be able to analyze examples of these in any future books I read and also to better understand The Odyssey. I will use what I learned to find examples of these things in other books and also think of obligations in real life.
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