The previous instalment established a new group of young survivors – the “core four” – although as we’re explicitly told, several times, any one of them could be the killer, and absolutely everybody is expendable. We’re well into franchise territory here, after all. Written down sometime between 800 and 600 BCE, the Odysseyis of the best known and most stupendously awesome works of ancient literature-make that any literature.Not returning is Neve Campbell, the original damsel in distress, following a dispute over pay. Composed (maybe) by a poet named Homer (maybe), it tells the story of a man trying to make his way home from war. But not just any man, and not just any war. Its hero is Odysseus, who is basically the Jon Hamm of Ancient Greece: smart, strong, attractive, brave, beloved by the gods, and way cooler than you are. In a way, the Odyssey is a sequel to Homer's Iliad, a poem about the decade-long Trojan War. But don't let any prejudice about sequels throw you off: the Iliad and the Odyssey may have a lot of the same characters, but they're more like fraternal than identical twins: they complement each other. The Iliad is all about achieving glory and fame through warlike deeds, a concept the Greeks called kleos. Basically, it's full of pages and pages of heroes doing heroic things heroically. Which is awesome in its own way, and it made a fun, if not very accurate, movie. But even warriors have to go home eventually, and the Odyssey is all about the desire to go home: to see a familiar face, to kiss your wife, and to give your old dog a pat on the head. The Greeks had a word for that, too: nostos-the root of our own word "nostalgia." The Iliad and the Odyssey together are about the competing desires for kleos and nostos, which we can boil down to the desire to die gloriously in battle and the desire to die quietly at home in bed, surrounded by your family. So, the Odyssey isn't really a sequel to the Iliad so much as it's the yin to the Iliad's yang: two equal but competing human desires. We're not the only ones who get a little giddy when we talk about the Odyssey. Generations of readers have created their own original works inspired by Homer's epic. What is The Odyssey About and Why Should I Care? Just a quick sampling, from the 1st century BCE to the 21st century CE: Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem " Ulysses" James Joyce's novel Ulysses countless paintings (check out Henry Fuseli's " Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis") Cream's song " Tales of Brave Ulysses" the Cohen Brothers' movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?-and the list goes on. In a word where the '90s are retro, it's not easy to see why you should care about a millennia-old epic. Do you like stories full of adventure, danger, and suspense? How about stories set in fantastic worlds full of strange creatures like Cyclopes, witches, sirens, and gods? You're in luck: the Odyssey is basically Western literature's first action flick/ fantasy extravaganzafirst action flick/ fantasy extravaganza. You're more of a rom-com kind of guy (or gal): a group of young girls stumbling on a giant naked man is more your style. Great! The Odyssey has that too.īut maybe you're more interested in the deeper side of things-intense human emotions like longing, or the desire for home, or the love of a mother for her child. Awesome! The Odyssey isn't just an exciting story about blood-drinking cannibals it's also a poem stuffed with profound reflections on heroism, love, and human life. Let's put it this way: there's a reason that we're still reading it 3,000 years later. Categories include "Gods and Goddesses." "Mere Mortals," "Monsters," "Travel and Tourism," and "Misc." (Linked file is in PowerPoint.) Jefferson County Schools has created a terrific "Jeopardy" style trivia game for students to study the Odyssey. Check out this Google Earth map of Homer's travels GoogleLit Trips is a website devoted to helping teachers and students explore literature by using Google Earth. Homer probably took some poetic license with his geography. Still, here's a rough idea of where some of Odysseus' episodes may have taken place. If we linked to our learning guides every time we mentioned one of these guys, we'd get carpal tunnel. Here's a link to Shmoop's Greek and Roman mythology guide-you might notice some familiar names. This is actually a 1967 adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses.
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