Lesson 2

Lesson Goals

Texts

Core

• • The Odyssey, Homer, translated by Robert Fagles, Penguin Publishing Group, 1996

• • “A Translator’s Reckoning with the Women of the Odyssey,” Emily Wilson, The New Yorker, December 8, 2017

Materials

Tools

• Character Note-Taking Tool

• Summarizing Text Tool

Reference Guides

• Questioning Reference Guide

Question Sets

• The Odyssey: Section 4 Question Set

Editable Google Docs

• Character Note-Taking Tool

• The Odyssey: Section 4 Question Set

• Summarizing Text Tool

Activity 1: Read – View – Discuss – Write

We will summarize Book 22 of The Odyssey, focusing on determining key ideas.

Step 1

Review your Learning Log notes from the guiding questions for Book 22. Use the Summarizing Text Tool to summarize what has happened in Book 22.

As a reminder, the Summarizing Text Tool guides a reading and thinking process to help you make an effective summary of a text you are reading. Summaries should be short, concise, and include just enough information to help you remember or explain the main points of a text when you come back to it later. This tool allows you to list key details you might include in a summary, then select from your list as you write a summary of the text, drawing on the key details you identified.

Step 2

Share your Summarizing Text Tool with a partner. What do you want to add or modify based on what each other has shared?

Step 3

Consider the following question:

1. What important developments or wonderings about Book 23 would you like to present to the class?

Activity 2: Read – Write

We will read Book 23 and analyze Odyssesus’s actions.

Step 1

Read Book 23 using the following questions to guide your reading and be sure to cite evidence to support your thinking:

1. Why does Penelope test Odysseus? What might she be thinking at that moment? Why does Penelope choose to ask for the bed to be moved as a test for Odysseus? What other test might she have chosen?

2. Why does Odysseus initially respond with anger? What is he thinking when Penelope makes her statement about the bed?

3. How does Penelope reply when Odysseus passes the test?

4. In what way does the power dynamic between Odysseus and Penelope change after he passes the test?

Add notes to your Character Note-Taking Tools for both Penelope and Odysseus.

Step 2

In pairs, go back to your Character Note-Taking Tools. Examine the way in which characters have demonstrated power prior to Book 23. Book 23 represents a shift in power among the characters. With a partner, create a visual representation of the way in which power shifts between and among characters in Book 23. Focus specifically on Odysseus, the suitors, Eumaeus, Penelope, and Athena.

Step 3

Join another pair and compare your visuals. Discuss the way in which they are similar and different, and justify your responses.

Activity 3: Read – Write

For homework, we will read Emily Wilson’s article, “A Translator’s Reckoning with the Women of The Odyssey.”

For homework, read the article "A Translator's Reckoning with the Women of the Odyssey" by Emily Wilson. Annotate the text as you read, using the following questions to guide your thinking and annotating:

1. According to Wilson, in what ways does Penelope fit the ideal of an empowered woman? In what ways does she not?

2. How are Penelope’s choices defined by her marital status and social position? How do they compare to that of Odysseus?

3. Wilson claims, "The silencing of female voices, and the dangers of female agency, are central problems in the poem." Do these problems still exist today? If so, share examples. If not, explain how these problems are central in other books or movies.

4. Create one or two questions that you have about the article or create one or two questions about ideas that you would like to discuss with your classmates.