Week 3 Reading Diary: Homer's Odyssey

This week I chose to read the Odyssey, by Homer

Cyclops Wikipedia Article

The Land of the Cyclopes

• Homer does a good job of setting up the location of the story.  He describes the landscape, how the lands grow, and what type of people the Cyclopes are. 
• This section has lots of imagery,  what the characters are doing is not as important as the setting in this particular instance.

Prisoners of the Cyclops

•  Numbers are important, and Odysseus takes 12 of this best men to explore the cyclops cave.
• Know the beliefs of your readers.  It can be fun to create a universe, but using one that already exists (such as the Greek gods), can both save time, and make your readers comfortable.

The Cyclops Defeated

• The characters are in quite a predicament, and there is no obvious answer to the problem.  It is often good to make the reader wonder, instead of dropping enough hinds that the reader sees a obvious solution that is hidden to the characters.
• Odysseus is clever, and uses a false name to trick the cyclops. 

Escape from the Cyclops

•  The men strapped to the bellies of the sheep is a humorous image, and a clever way to get off the island.  I like it when characters have to use their wits to get out of sticky situations, instead of brute forcing through the problem.  It takes a witty author to come up with witty characters.

The Curse of Polyphemus

•  It is unwise to anger Poseidon's son, when you rely on the see for traveling across.
• Poseidon was not appeased with a sacrifice.  The men had already done wrong by and blinded his son.

Circe's Magic

•  Circe presents a very different scene than the men saw at the cyclops island. Circe is lovely, and offers great food. She lures them, tricks them, and turns them into pigs.  
• Trouble has many faces, and having a wide variety of different troubles makes an interesting story.

The Moly Defeats Circe

•  This is an interesting way to tell the story.  If a man drew his sword and tried to kill me, my first response would definitely not be to take him to bed.  
• I notice that Circe promised not to harm him, but she never made any promise about other people, just as her handmaids not harming him.

On Circe's Island

•  Although Circe is no longer turning the men into animals or doing them harm, she is still delaying them.  Men who are infinitely delayed will never finish their journey. 
• Circe gives Odysseus a very dangerous quest, he must travel to the underworld. Any reader in Homers times know how treacherous the underworld is, and there are few other tales of heroes who travel to the underworld

The Death of Elpenor

•  A story like this has a very specific style.  A hero has to make it through many trails, and solve each one differently.  Against all odds, he journeys on and succeeded.