Sunday, September 12, 2010

The Odyssey

Well that was quite a difficult read. I hope they don't add a billion more characters. I found that it helped to rewrite the first several paragraphs in a more modern english. It helped to understand what was going on at first. I had a couple quick comments. I really liked Minerva she seemed to be a mother type figure, very compassionate. Also I liked that Telemachus stood up to those suiters (what pigs). Here are the first three paragraphs that I rewrote just in case it might help you in any way (I realized how long it would take to rewrite the whole thing once I got to this point).

So some guy defeated the town of Troy. Visited many cities and learned a lot of cultures. Further more he suffered a lot on his boat trying to keep everyone safe. But they were stupid and ate the Sun-gods cattle (Sun-god=Hyperion). So Hyperion said they couldn’t go home. 
Everyone who escaped death in battle or in a sinking boat got safely home. Except this guy named Ulysses, even though he wanted to go home to his wife, the goddess Calypso kept him in large cave because she wanted to marry him. Years later the gods let him go home to Ithaca (is this were he lives or the name of his wife?). Even when he was with his own people he still had troubles. Despite this the gods pitied him except for Neptune, who would not let him get home.
Neptune had gone to the Ethiopians, who lived at the world's end (Africa? And I think it’s saying it has miraculously split in two). He went to accept a Hecatomb (A public sacrifice, originally of a hundred oxen) and was enjoying himself. But the other gods met in the house of Olympian Jove, and the male leader of the gods and people spoke first. He (Whoa way to throw in a random character) was thinking of Aegisthus, who had been killed by Agamemnon’s son Orestes; so he (again who is this “he”) said to the other gods:

1 comment:

  1. Great job of paraphrasing, Madalynne -- thanks for sharing it with the rest of us! You're already practicing your active reading skills, asking questions as you go. Yay!

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