The narrator calls upon the muse to help him tell the story of odysseus. Read an overview of the entire poem or a line by line summary and analysis. The odyssey books 14 summary and analysis gradesaver. Rather than open the story with the culmination of the trojan war. The odyssey is an epic journey, but the word journey must be broadly understood. As she is putting them in a basin of water, she notices a scar on one of his feet. Book 1 book 2 book 3 book 4 book 5 book 6 book 7 book 8 book 9 book 10 book 11 book 12 book book 14 book 15 book 16 book 17 book 18 book 19 book 20 book 21 book 22 book 23 book 24 themes all themes fate, the gods, and free will piety, customs, and justice cunning, disguise, and selfrestraint memory and grief glory and honor. One of the suitors, antinous, plans to assassinate the young prince, eliminating the only opposition to their dominion over the palace. The odyssey opens with the poet asking the muse of epic poetry, calliope, to inspire him in the telling of this story. She immediately recognizes it as the scar that odysseus received when he went. When she reached the suitors she stood by one of the bearing posts that supported the roof of the cloisters with a staid.
The epic focuses, of course, on odysseus s nostos return home or homeward voyage, a journey whose details a greek audience would already know because of their rich oral mythic tradition. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans. We pick up ten years after the fall of troy in the trojan war the subject of the iliad. Telemachus leaves odysseus at eumaeuss hut and heads to his palace, where he. Fittingly, this expansion in setting prompts an expansion in the story itself, as each of telemachuss hosts adds his own story to the odyssey. Telemachus gathers an assembly of achaeans to make his case for removing the suitors from his home. Like homers other epic, the iliad, the odyssey begins in medias res, or in the middle of things. The story begins ten years after the end of the trojan war, the subject of the iliad. In the hut of eumaeus, odysseus tests the limit of his hospitality by offering to leave in. See a complete list of the characters in the odyssey and indepth analyses of odysseus, telemachus, penelope, athena, calypso, and circe.
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