Homework Question  Copy this down on a sheet of lined paper and answer it as homework. If you kept it, attach the map you made when we first started reading.  How is Boo Radley’s perspective of the street different than Scout’s? What is he seeing that she isn’t? How is that valuable? Would you map have looked differently if Boo was the narrator? How?

Epic, Tragedy, Tragic Hero Notes The Odyssey March 2015

Epic  Write one sentence: What does the word epic mean to you?  Write one sentence: How would you use the word epic in every day life?

Epic  An epic is a type of poetry.  It is usually an entire story told in verse (poetic) form.  “a long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the history of a nation.”  This week, we will start reading The Odyssey. It is an EPIC poem.

Tragedy  Write one sentence: What does it mean for something to be “tragic”?  Write one sentence: What is a tragedy you have faced in your life?  Brainstorm and write down 5 examples of movies that you would consider tragedies.

Tragedy  “an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.”  “a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, esp. one concerning the downfall of the main character.”  In The Odyssey, a man named Odysseus spends ten years trying to get home from war to see his wife. Throughout the epic, he faces tragic circumstances.

Tragic Hero  A tragic hero “is a person of noble birth with heroic or potentially heroic qualities. This person is fated by the Gods or by some supernatural force to doom and destruction or at least to great suffering. But the hero struggles mightily against this fate and this cosmic conflict wins our admiration.”  What this means is that a tragic hero is someone heroic and respectable with at least one recognizable flaw that causes him/her to struggle and face challenges.

Tragic Hero  By that definition, can you think of any tragic heroes from movies or TV shows you watch?

Tragic Flaw  The tragic flaw is “the character defect that causes the downfall of the protagonist of a tragedy”  1 sentence: What does that mean?  What are the tragic flaws of the characters you said were tragic heroes?

The Odyssey  The Trojan War  Helen of Troy  The Trojan Horse  Odysseus, Achilles, Ajax  Paris, Hector  Greek gods and goddesses.

Athena  Athena is probably the most important goddess in The Odyssey  Athena respects and helps Odysseus.  She is the goddess of wisdom.  Write one sentence: What does it mean to be wise?  Write one sentence: How is being wise different than being smart?

Greek Mythology  Zeus  Hera  Poseidon  Athena  Aphrodite  Hephaestus  Dionysius  Demeter  Apollo  Artemis  Ares  Hades  Hermes  The muses  Mythological Creatures

The Oral Tradition  In Ancient Greece many stories were recited over and over by different people for many years.  These stories were about the gods and the heroes.  In order to make them easier to remember, the were often recited in poetic form because the rhyme made them easier to memorize.  Due to the oral nature of the stories, each poet may have presented slightly different versions of events. As people passed on the stories, they changed slowly over time.  HOMER is not the author of the Odyssey, he is just the person who recorded the poem after many years. So essentially, the version we read is an English translation of Homer’s version of the story.