Educational worksheet for "The Odyssey" from Crash Course Literature #201, focusing on key themes and characters.

1. Homer; 8th
2. Odysseus; his journey home after the Trojan War
3. The most important event is Odysseus’s return to Ithaca and his reunion with his family, as it resolves the central conflict of the epic.
4. When “The Odyssey” opens, Odysseus is on Calypso’s island; everyone is already back home except for Odysseus. After a series of adventures and a whole lot of bad luck, he finally returns home to Ithaca in disguise.
5. Odysseus was pretty much okay with it taking so long. His distinguishing quality is cleverness, which means he can outwit anyone. He had a kind of a measure of success because he survived all the dangers and eventually returned home.
6. The whole epic is incredibly paranoid about the idea of “monstrous females,” as many female characters are portrayed as dangerous or deceptive.
7. Even as he is sleeping soundly, Odysseus is incredibly concerned with whether or not Penelope has remained faithful.
8. “The Iliad” is a poem of war and its main concern is glory, which means glory is present whenever there is battlefield combat that generates a kind of fame — because your deeds are so amazing that everyone’s going to talk about you forever.
9. But “The Odyssey” is about the journey home — it’s about what we do after a war, how we rebuild our lives, and how we reintegrate into society.