The Odyssey in Classics Without All the Class

Jul 20, 2021 Morgann rated it liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Summary: Athene pleads for Odysseus’s safe return home despite Poseidon still being angry with him. Athena also request that Telemachus, Oydysseus’s son go and look or for his father and of course we learn about the trials and hardships Odysseus goes through on his way home to Ithaca when. Penelope, Odysseus’s wife also has her own problems namely the suitors squatting in her home.

Thoughts: This poem could have been shorter. I wanted to like this and The Iliad more than I did but at the end of Summary: Athene pleads for Odysseus’s safe return home despite Poseidon still being angry with him. Athena also request that Telemachus, Oydysseus’s son go and look or for his father and of course we learn about the trials and hardships Odysseus goes through on his way home to Ithaca when. Penelope, Odysseus’s wife also has her own problems namely the suitors squatting in her home.

Thoughts: This poem could have been shorter. I wanted to like this and The Iliad more than I did but at the end of the day there are too many names none of which I know how to pronounce. However, the Odyssey is a fun story and I liked reading about Odysseus’s adventures, escaping and blinding the Cyclops , rebuffing Circe, visiting the underworld, trapped with Calypso, and navigating through Charybdis and Scylla are all fun adventures to read bout. The adventures were my favorite part but nearly equally entertaining was seeing Athena aka Minvera interacting with Odysseus and the gang I’m still not sure why my version of the Odysseus uses the God’s Roman rather than Greek names but it did and it was kind of weird every time a god was mentioned I had to remind myself of the god’s Greek name before moving on. Also this story confirmed that you’re better off without the god’s favor or them even knowing you exist, Minerva let’s Odysseus struggle for 20ish years before intervening and then sends his son on a useless quest to improve his image rather than just tell him that his father is alive. Also I kind of agree with Poseidon, Odysseus is a bit of a dick and Penelope could have done better I mean he murders the suitors and then the female servants which is extreme and killed any potential likability of Odysseus for me. Telemachus and Penelope seem better off with out him, and I still think Penelope is smarter than Odysseus. However, the story is a classic full of fun adventures but that inspires wonderlust for the ancient world, heroes and adventure but it’s still hard to relate and like Odysseus. ...more

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May 15, 2011 Timothy Ferguson rated it really liked it

Odyseey coverI thought I already knew this story, but was surprised by the fact that the tale I knew, which is basically the return home and the destruction of the suitors, is a tiny part of the narrative told mostly in flashback. There’s an awful lot of other stuff clustering around the cinematic bits of this story, and in learning about it, I came to enjoy the story far more deeply. Penelope is a fantastic character, for example, and if you know only the abridged version of this story, see see ...more

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