Odyssey Test questions with Verified
And Explained answers
What to do when:
Reading the Epic as Narrative - ✔✔Note the changing of the Narrator; Visualize
the action being shown by details in text; Track the events and predict the
outcomes; Use a chart to show organized thoughts
What to do when:
Reading the Epic as Poetry - ✔✔Read lines allowed as originally performed; Read
lines for their sense; Listen for literary devices; Consider imagery and figurative
language to help with understanding
What to do when:
Reading the Epic as a Reflection of Its Time - ✔✔Pay attention to character traits;
Think about prior knowledge; Think about beliefs during that time; Remember the
Supernatural
Model: Reading the Epic - ✔✔Telemachus addresses the crowd, complaining of the
suitors' behavior.
"No; these men spend their days around our house
, killing our beeves and sheep and fatted goats, carousing, soaking up our good dark
wine, not caring what they do. They squander everything.
We have no strong Odysseus to defend us, and as to putting up a fight ourselves—
we'd only show our incompetence in arms. Expel them, yes, if I only had the power;
the whole thing's out of hand, insufferable."
A suitor responds to Telemachus' heated accusation. "You want to shame us, and
humiliate us,
but you should know the suitors are not to blame—it is your own dear, incomparably
cunning mother. For three years now—and it will soon be four—she has been
breaking the hearts of the Achaeans,
holding out hope to all, and sending promises to each man privately—but thinking
otherwise.
Here is an instance of her trickery: she had her great loom standing in the hall
and the fine warp of some vast fabric on it; we were attending her, and she said to us:
'Young men, my suitors, now my lord is dead, let me finish my weaving before I marry,
or else my thread will have been spun in vain. It is a shroud I weave for Lord Laertes,
when cold death comes to lay him on his bier. The country wives would hold me in
dishonor if he, with all his fortune, lay unshrouded.' We have men's hearts; she
touched them; we agreed. So every day she wove on the great loom—but every night
by torchlight she unwove it; and so for three years she deceived the Achaeans."
Try to visualize the suitors at Odysseus' home by using details in lines 1-9. Describe the
image that the lines conjured up in your mind. - ✔✔Suitors taking everything of
value and lounging around eating all the food and drinking all the wine.
Note the two speakers. What does Telemachus accuse the suitors of doing? How does
the one suitor defend their actions? - ✔✔accuses of destroying everything. The
suitor blames Penelope because if she would marry, all of this would end.
Identify two examples of sound devices in the boxed text. - ✔✔Alliteration;
Assonance
And Explained answers
What to do when:
Reading the Epic as Narrative - ✔✔Note the changing of the Narrator; Visualize
the action being shown by details in text; Track the events and predict the
outcomes; Use a chart to show organized thoughts
What to do when:
Reading the Epic as Poetry - ✔✔Read lines allowed as originally performed; Read
lines for their sense; Listen for literary devices; Consider imagery and figurative
language to help with understanding
What to do when:
Reading the Epic as a Reflection of Its Time - ✔✔Pay attention to character traits;
Think about prior knowledge; Think about beliefs during that time; Remember the
Supernatural
Model: Reading the Epic - ✔✔Telemachus addresses the crowd, complaining of the
suitors' behavior.
"No; these men spend their days around our house
, killing our beeves and sheep and fatted goats, carousing, soaking up our good dark
wine, not caring what they do. They squander everything.
We have no strong Odysseus to defend us, and as to putting up a fight ourselves—
we'd only show our incompetence in arms. Expel them, yes, if I only had the power;
the whole thing's out of hand, insufferable."
A suitor responds to Telemachus' heated accusation. "You want to shame us, and
humiliate us,
but you should know the suitors are not to blame—it is your own dear, incomparably
cunning mother. For three years now—and it will soon be four—she has been
breaking the hearts of the Achaeans,
holding out hope to all, and sending promises to each man privately—but thinking
otherwise.
Here is an instance of her trickery: she had her great loom standing in the hall
and the fine warp of some vast fabric on it; we were attending her, and she said to us:
'Young men, my suitors, now my lord is dead, let me finish my weaving before I marry,
or else my thread will have been spun in vain. It is a shroud I weave for Lord Laertes,
when cold death comes to lay him on his bier. The country wives would hold me in
dishonor if he, with all his fortune, lay unshrouded.' We have men's hearts; she
touched them; we agreed. So every day she wove on the great loom—but every night
by torchlight she unwove it; and so for three years she deceived the Achaeans."
Try to visualize the suitors at Odysseus' home by using details in lines 1-9. Describe the
image that the lines conjured up in your mind. - ✔✔Suitors taking everything of
value and lounging around eating all the food and drinking all the wine.
Note the two speakers. What does Telemachus accuse the suitors of doing? How does
the one suitor defend their actions? - ✔✔accuses of destroying everything. The
suitor blames Penelope because if she would marry, all of this would end.
Identify two examples of sound devices in the boxed text. - ✔✔Alliteration;
Assonance
