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Date Assigned______________ Due Date __________________________

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Grade 9 Unit 6

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from the Odyssey, Part 1 by HomerWriting About the Big Question

The Big Question: Do heroes have responsibilities?

Big Question Vocabulary

character choices hero honesty identify imitate intentions involvement justice morality obligation responsibility serve standard wisdom

A. Use one or more words from the list above to complete each sentence.

1. The _______________ made by a(n) _______________ in a literary work often determine the outcome of the plot.2. A(n) _______________ is usually someone who embodies the values of an entire culture or society.3. _______________ and _______________ are two values that a(n) _______________ typically upholds.4. By any measure, Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, lives up to a heroic ______________.5. It is usually easy to _______________ the hero of an epic poem.

B. Follow the directions in responding to each of the items below.

1. List two different times that you became aware of a responsibility.______________________________________________________________________________

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2. Write two sentences to explain one of these experiences, and describe how it made you feel. Use at least two of the Big Question vocabulary words.______________________________________________________________________________

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C. Complete the sentences below. Then, write a short paragraph in which you connect the sentences to the Big Question.

A hero has an obligation to _______________. The choices he or she makes must______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

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Grade 9 Unit 6 2


from the Odyssey, Part 1 by HomerReading: Analyze the Influence of

Historical and Cultural Context The historical and cultural context of a work is the backdrop of details of the time and place in which the work is set or in which it was written. These details include the events, beliefs, and customs of a specific culture and time. When you read a work from another time and culture, use background and prior knowledge to analyze the influence of the historical and cultural context.

• Read the author biography, footnotes, and other textual aids to understand the work’s historical and cultural context.

• Note how characters’ behavior and attitudes reflect that context.

DIRECTIONS: Answer the following questions on the lines provided.

1. What does the common noun odyssey mean? Use a dictionary, if necessary, to look up thisword and identify its meaning. How does this word relate to Homer’s epic and the hero Odysseus?

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2. What does the word Homeric mean? How does this word relate to the ancient Greek epics the Iliad and the Odyssey?

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3. About when were the Homeric epics composed, or when did they assume their final form after centuries of development in the oral tradition?

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4. Reread Odysseus’ description of the Cyclopes in Part 1, lines 109–120. What does this passage imply about ancient Greek values and beliefs? Explain your answer in a brief paragraph.

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Grade 9 Unit 6 3


from the Odyssey, Part 1 by HomerVocabulary Builder

Word List ardor assuage bereft dispatched insidious plundered

A. DIRECTIONS: In each of the following items, think about the meaning of the italicized wordand then answer the question.

1. If you regard someone as insidious, do you like or dislike that person? Why?

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2. Historically, when do people tend to plunder—during wartime or peacetime?

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3. If Maria dispatched her assignment, did it take her a long time or a short time to finish?

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4. Would you use gentle words or provocative words to assuage someone’s anger or demands? Explain.

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5. If you were bereft of sleep, would you feel fatigued or well-rested?

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B. WORD STUDY: The Old English prefix be-, meaning “around,” “make,” or “covered with,” can sometimes be added to a noun or an adjective to create a transitive verb. Examples include beheld and begone. Match the word in Column A with its meaning in Column B by writing the correct letter on the line provided.

___ 1. bemoan

___ 2. bewilder

___ 3. beware

___ 4. betoken

___ 5. bereft

A. be on one’s guard

B. lament

C. signify

D. confuse

E. deprived

Grade 9 Unit 6 4


from the Odyssey, Part 1 by HomerIntegrated Language Skills: Grammar

Simple and Compound SentencesA simple sentence consists of a single independent clause. Although a simple sentence is justone independent clause with one subject and verb, the subject, verb, or both may be compound.A simple sentence may have modifying phrases and complements. However, it cannot have a subordinate clause.

Example: Odysseus returned to Ithaca and took his revenge on the suitors. (simple sentence with compound verb)

A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses. The clauses can be joined by a comma and a coordinating conjunction or by a semicolon. Like a simple sentence, a compound sentence contains no subordinate clauses.

Example: The suitors reveled in the hall; in the meantime, Penelope questioned the disguised Odysseus.

A. DIRECTIONS: Identify each sentence as simple or compound.

1. In his monumental epic, the Odyssey, Homer recounts the wanderings of Odysseus on his

journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.__________________________________________

2. Odysseus enjoys the favor of the goddess Athena, but his safe return is jeopardized by the

hostility of Poseidon, the sea god. __________________________________________________

3. Odysseus foolishly leads his men into the cave of the Cyclops; there, several of them meet a

ghastly fate. ____________________________________________________________________

4. Odysseus tricks the Cyclops by telling him a false name: “Nohbdy.”_____________________

5. At the end of this adventure, however, Odysseus boastfully reveals his true name, thereby

making himself vulnerable to the Cyclops’ curse._______________________________________

Grade 9 Unit 6 5


from the Odyssey, Part 1 by HomerEnrichment: Geography

The term odyssey, meaning a long voyage or wandering, comes from the name Odysseus. Zeus’ winds send Odysseus and his men to the farthest reaches of the Mediterranean Sea. Scholars have traced many of the places in this epic to actual places around the Mediterranean.

DIRECTIONS: Use details from the map and the Odyssey answer these questions.

1. After the war ends at Troy, Odysseus sets sail for Ithaca. What is the exact location of Odysseus’ beloved home?

______________________________________________________________________________

2. Between the time that he drags his men away from the Lotus-Eaters in the land of the Cicones and the time that he reaches Aeolia, Odysseus encounters the Cyclops. Where might the land of the Cyclops have been located?

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3. Scholars have named the Strait of Messina as the home of Scylla and Charybdis. Why might these watery threats be attributed to this geographical feature?

______________________________________________________________________________

4. The Italian island of Capri has been traditionally thought to be the home of the Sirens. After escaping the Sirens, in which direction does Odysseus sail?

______________________________________________________________________________

5. On the map, chart the route that Odysseus travels from Troy until his first encounter with Scylla and Charybdis

Grade 9 Unit 6 6


“The Hero’s Adventure” Selections from chapter five of The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, First Anchor Books: 1991.

The Power of Myth is a book based on a documentary originally broadcast on PBS in 1988 as Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. The documentary comprises six one-hour conversations between mythologist Joseph Campbell journalist Bill Moyers in 1987.

The placement of a ‘[ . . . ]’ identifies the location of a passage that was removed.

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world. -- JOSEPH CAMPBELL

MOYERS: Why are there so many stories of the hero in mythology?

CAMPBELL: Because that's what's worth writing about. Even in popular novels, the main character is a hero or heroine who has found or done something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience. A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

MOYERS: So in all of these cultures, whatever the local costume the hero might be wearing, what is the deed? CAMPBELL: Well, there are two types of deed. One is the physical deed, in which the hero performs a courageous act in battle or saves a life. The other kind is the spiritual deed, in which the hero learns to experience the supernormal range of human spiritual life and then comes back with a message. The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there's something lacking in the normal experiences available or permitted to the

members of his society. This person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It's usually a cycle, a going and a returning. But the structure and something of the spiritual sense of this adventure can be seen already anticipated in the puberty or initiation rituals of early tribal societies, through which a child is compelled to give up its childhood and become an adult -- to die, you might say, to its infantile personality and psyche and come back as a responsible adult. This is a fundamental psychological transformation that everyone has to undergo. We are in childhood in a condition of dependency under someone's protection and supervision for some fourteen to twenty-one years - - and if you're going on for your Ph.D., this may continue to perhaps thirty-five. You are in no way a self-responsible, free agent, but an obedient dependent, expecting and receiving punishments and rewards. To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection. That's the basic motif of the universal hero's journey -- leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition.

MOYERS: So even if we happen not to be heroes in the grand sense of redeeming society, we still have to take that journey inside ourselves, spiritually and psychologically.

CAMPBELL: That's right. Otto Rank in his important little book The Myth of the Birth of the Hero declares that everyone is a hero in birth, where he undergoes a tremendous psychological as well as physical transformation, from the condition of a little water creature living in a realm of amniotic fluid into an air- breathing mammal which ultimately will be standing. That's an enormous transformation, and had it been consciously undertaken, it would have been, indeed, a heroic act.

MOYERS: But there's still a journey to be taken after that.

CAMPBELL: There's a large journey to be taken, of many trials.

MOYERS: What's the significance of the trials, and tests, and ordeals of the hero?

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CAMPBELL: If you want to put it in terms of intentions, the trials are designed to see to it that the intending hero should be really a hero. Is he really a match for this task? Can he overcome the dangers? Does he have the courage, the knowledge, the capacity, to enable him to serve?

MOYERS: In this culture of easy religion, cheaply achieved, it seems to me we've forgotten that all three of the great religions teach that the trials of the hero journey are a significant part of life, that there's no reward without renunciation, without paying the price. The Koran says, "Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you?" And Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew, "Great is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth to life, and few there be who find it." And the heroes of the Jewish tradition undergo great tests before they arrive at their redemption.

CAMPBELL: If you realize what the real problem is -- losing yourself, giving yourself to some higher end, or to another -- you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial. When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness. And what all the myths have to deal with is transformations of consciousness of one kind or another. You have been thinking one way, you now have to think a different way.

MOYERS: How is consciousness transformed? CAMPBELL: Either by the trials themselves or by illuminating revelations. Trials and revelations are what it's all about.MOYERS: Isn't there a moment of redemption in all of these stories? The woman is saved from the dragon, the city is spared from obliteration, the hero is snatched from danger in the nick of time.

CAMPBELL: Well, yes. There would be no hero deed unless there were an achievement. We can have the hero who fails, but he's usually represented as a kind of clown, someone pretending to more than he can achieve.

MOYERS: How is a hero different from a leader? CAMPBELL: That is a problem Tolstoy dealt with in War and Peace. Here you have Napoleon ravaging Europe and now about to invade Russia, and Tolstoy raises this question:

Is the leader really a leader, or is he simply the one out in front on a wave? In psychological terms, the leader might be analyzed as the one who perceived what could be achieved and did it. MOYERS: It has been said that a leader is someone who discerned the inevitable and got in front of it. Napoleon was a leader, but he wasn't a hero in the sense that what he accomplished was grand for humanity's sake. It was or France, the glory of France.

CAMPBELL: The moral objective is that of saving a people, or saving a person, or supporting an idea. The hero sacrifices himself for something -- that's the morality of it. Now, from another position, of course, you might say that the idea for which he sacrificed himself was something that should not have been respected. That's a judgment from the other side, but it doesn't destroy the intrinsic heroism of the deed performed.

MOYERS: Does your study of mythology lead you to conclude that a single human quest, a standard pattern of human aspiration and thought, constitutes for all mankind something that we have in common, whether we lived a million years ago or will live a thousand years from now?

CAMPBELL: There's a certain type of myth which one might call the vision quest, going in quest of a boon, a vision, which has the same form in every mythology. That is the thing that I tried to present in the first book I wrote, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. All these different mythologies give us the same essential quest. You leave the world that you're in and go into a depth or into a distance or up to a height. There you come to what was missing in your consciousness in the world you formerly inhabited. Then comes the problem either of staying with that, and letting the world drop off, or returning with that boon and trying to hold on to it as you move back into your social world again. That's not an easy thing to do.

MOYERS: So the hero goes for something, he doesn't just go along for the ride, he's not simply an adventurer?

CAMPBELL: There are both kinds of heroes, some that choose to undertake the journey and some that don't. In one kind of adventure, the hero sets out responsibly and intentionally to

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perform the deed. For instance, Odysseus' son Telemachus was told by Athena, "Go find your father." That father quest is a major hero adventure for young people. That is the adventure of finding what your career is, what your nature is, what your source is. You undertake that intentionally. Or there is the legend of the Sumerian sky goddess, Inanna, who descended into the underworld and underwent death to bring her beloved back to life. Then there are adventures into which you are thrown -- for example, being drafted into the army. You didn't intend it, but you're in now. You've undergone a death and resurrection, you've put on a uniform, and you're another creature. One kind of hero that often appears in Celtic myths is the princely hunter, who has followed the lure of a deer into a range of forest that he has never been in before. The animal there undergoes a transformation, becoming the Queen of the Faerie Hills, or something of that kind. This is a type of adventure in which the hero has no idea what he is doing but suddenly finds himself in a transformed realm.

MOYERS: Is the adventurer who takes that kind of trip a hero in the mythological sense?

CAMPBELL: Yes, because he is always ready for it. In these stories, the adventure that the hero is ready for is the one he gets. The adventure is symbolically a manifestation of his character. Even the landscape and the conditions of the environment match his readiness.

MOYERS: So perhaps the hero lurks in each one of us when we don't know it?

CAMPBELL: Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower. "Lead us not into temptation." Ortega y Gasset talks about the environment and the hero in his Meditations on Don Quixote. Don Quixote was the last hero of the Middle Ages. He rode out to encounter giants, but instead of giants, his environment produced windmills. Ortega points out that this story takes place about the time that a mechanistic interpretation of the world came in, so that the environment was no longer spiritually responsive to the hero. The hero is today running up against a hard world that is in no way responsive to his spiritual need.

MOYERS: A windmill.CAMPBELL: Yes, but Quixote saved the adventure for himself by inventing a magician who had just transformed the giants he had gone forth to encounter into windmills. You can do that, too, if you have a poetic imagination. Earlier, though, it was not a mechanistic world in which the hero moved but a world alive and responsive to his spiritual readiness. Now it has become to such an extent a sheerly mechanistic world, as interpreted through our physical sciences, Marxist sociology, and behavioristic psychology, that we're nothing but a predictable pattern of wires responding to stimuli. This nineteenth-century interpretation has squeezed the freedom of the human will out of modern life.

MOYERS: In the political sense, is there a danger that these myths of heroes teach us to look at the deeds of others as if we were in an amphitheater or coliseum or a movie, watching others perform great deeds while consoling ourselves to impotence?

We seem to worship celebrities today, not heroes. CAMPBELL: Yes, and that's too bad. A questionnaire was once sent around one of the high schools in Brooklyn which asked, "What would you like to be?" Two thirds of the students responded, "A celebrity." They had no notion of having to give of themselves in order to achieve something.MOYERS: Just to be known.CAMPBELL: Just to be known, to have fame-name and fame. It's too bad.

MOYERS: But does a society need heroes?CAMPBELL: Yes, I think so.MOYERS: Why?CAMPBELL: Because it has to have constellating images to pull together all these tendencies to separation, to pull them together into some intention.MOYERS: To follow some path.CAMPBELL: I think so. The nation has to have an intention somehow to operate as a single power.

MOYERS: Don't many of the heroes in mythology die to the world? They suffer, they're crucified.

CAMPBELL: Many of them give their lives. But then the myth also says that out of the given life



comes a new life. It may not be the hero's life, but it's a new life, a new way of being of becoming.

MOYERS: These stories of the hero vary from culture to culture. Is the hero from the East different from the hero in our culture?

CAMPBELL: It's the degree of the illumination or action that makes them different. There is a typical early culture hero who goes around slaying monsters. Now, that is a form of adventure from the period of prehistory when man was shaping his world out of a dangerous, unshaped wilderness. He goes about killing monsters.

MOYERS: So the hero evolves over time like most other concepts and ideas?

MOYERS: Why did you call your book The Hero with a Thousand Faces?

CAMPBELL: Because there is a certain typical hero sequence of actions which can be detected in stories from all over the world and from many periods of history. Essentially, it might even be said there is but one archetypal mythic hero whose life has been replicated in many lands by many, many people. A legendary hero is usually the founder of something -- the founder of a new age, the founder of a new religion, the founder of a new city, the founder of a new way of life. In order to found something new, one has to leave the old and go in quest of the seed idea, a germinal idea that will have the potentiality of bringing forth that new thing. The founders of all religions have gone on quests like that. The Buddha went into solitude and then sat beneath the bo tree, the tree of immortal knowledge, where he received an illumination that has enlightened all of Asia for twenty-five hundred years. After baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus went into the desert for forty days; and it was out of that desert that he came with his message. Moses went to the top of a mountain and came down with the tables of the law. Then you have the one who founds a new city -- almost all the old Greek cities were founded by heroes who went off on quests and had surprising adventures, out of which each then founded a city. You might also say that the founder of a life -- your life or mine, if we live our own lives, instead of imitating everybody else's life -- comes from a quest as well.

[. . .]

CAMPBELL: Myths inspire the realization of the possibility of your perfection, the fullness of your strength, and the bringing of solar light into the world. Slaying monsters is slaying the dark things. Myths grab you somewhere down inside. As a boy, you go at it one way, as I did reading my Indian stories. Later on, myths tell you more, and more, and still more. I think that anyone who has ever dealt seriously with religious or mythic ideas will tell you that we learn them as a child on one level, but then many different levels are revealed. Myths are infinite in their revelation.

MOYERS: How do I slay that dragon in me? What's the journey each of us has to make, what you call "the soul's high adventure"?

CAMPBELL: My general formula for my students is "Follow your bliss." Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it.

MOYERS: Is it my work or my life?CAMPBELL: If the work that you're doing is the work hat you chose to do because you are enjoying it, that's it. But if you think, "Oh, no! I couldn't do that!" that's the dragon locking you in. "No, no, I couldn't be a writer," or "No, no, I couldn't possibly do what So-and- so is doing."

MOYERS: In this sense, unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus, we're not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves.

CAMPBELL: But in doing that, you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there's no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who's on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it's alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.

MOYERS: When I take that journey and go down there and slay those dragons, do I have to go alone?

CAMPBELL: If you have someone who can help you, that's fine, too. But, ultimately, the last deed has to be done by oneself. Psychologically, the dragon is one's own binding of oneself to



one's ego. We're captured in our own dragon cage. The problem of the psychiatrist is to disintegrate that dragon, break him up, so that you may expand to a larger field of relationships. The ultimate dragon is within you, it is your ego clamping you down.

MOYERS: What's my ego?CAMPBELL: What you think you want, what you will to believe, what you think you can afford, what you decide to love, what you regard yourself as bound to. It may be all much too small, in which case it will nail you down. And if you simply do what your neighbors tell you to do, you're certainly going to be nailed down. Your neighbors are then your dragon as it reflects from within yourself. Our Western dragons represent greed. However, the Chinese dragon is different. It represents the vitality of the swamps and comes up beating its belly and bellowing, "Haw ha ha haww." That's a lovely kind of dragon, one that yields the bounty of the waters, a great, glorious gift. But the dragon of our Western tales tries to collect and keep everything to himself. In his secret cave he guards things: heaps of gold and perhaps a captured virgin. He doesn't know what to do with either, so he just guards and keeps. There are people like that, and we call them creeps. There's no life from them, no giving. They just glue themselves to you and hang around and try to suck out of you their life.

MOYERS: Would you tell [. . .] your students as an illustration of how, if they follow their bliss, if they take chances with their lives, if they do what they want to, the adventure is its own reward?

CAMPBELL: The adventure is its own reward -- but it's necessarily dangerous, having both negative and positive possibilities, all of them beyond control. We are following our own way, not our daddy's or our mother's way. So we are beyond protection in a field of higher powers than we know. One has to have some sense of what the conflict possibilities will be in this field, and here a few good archetypal stories like this may help us to know what to expect. If we have been impudent and altogether ineligible for the role into which we have cast ourselves, it is going to be a demon marriage and a real mess. However, even here there may be heard a rescuing voice, to convert the adventure into a glory beyond anything ever imagined.

MOYERS: It's easier to stay home, stay in the womb, not take the journey.

CAMPBELL: Yes, but then life can dry up because you're not off on your own adventure.

CAMPBELL: "All life is suffering," said the Buddha, and Joyce has a line -- "Is life worth leaving?"

MOYERS: But what about the young person who says, "I didn't choose to be born -- my mother and father made the choice for me."

CAMPBELL: Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life, and Marx tells us to blame the upper class of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself. That's the helpful thing about the Indian idea of karma. Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

MOYERS: But what about chance? A drunken driver turns the corner and hits you. That isn't your fault. You haven't done that to yourself.

CAMPBELL: From that point of view, is there anything in your life that did not occur as by chance? This is a matter of being able to accept chance. The ultimate backing of life is chance -- the chance that your parents met, for example! Chance, or what might seem to be chance, is the means through which life is realized. The problem is not to blame or explain but to handle the life that arises. Another war has been declared somewhere, and you are drafted into an army, and there go five or six years of your life with a whole new set of chance events. The best advice is to take it all as if it had been of your intention -- with that, you evoke the participation of your will.MOYERS: In all of these journeys of mythology, there's a

place everyone wishes to find. The Buddhists talk of Nirvana, and Jesus talks of peace, of the mansion with many rooms. Is that typical of the hero's journey -- that there's a place to find?

CAMPBELL: The place to find is within yourself. I learned a little about this in athletics. The athlete who is in top form has a quiet place within himself, and it's around this, somehow, that his action occurs. If he's all out there in the



action field, he will not be performing properly. My wife is a dancer, and she tells me that this is true in dance as well. There's a center of quietness within, which has to be known and held. If you lose that center, you are in tension and begin to fall apart. The Buddhist Nirvana is a center of peace of this kind. Buddhism is a psychological religion. It starts with the psychological problem of suffering: all life is sorrowful; there is, however, an escape from sorrow; the escape is Nirvana -- which is a state of mind or consciousness, not a place somewhere, like heaven. It is right here, in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments, when you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that. Voluntary action out of this

center is the action of the bodhisattvas – joyful participation in the sorrows of the world.

MOYERS: But people ask, isn't a myth a lie? CAMPBELL: No, mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth -- penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told. So this is the penultimate truth. It's important to live life with the experience, and therefore the knowledge, of its mystery and of your own mystery. This gives life a new radiance, a new harmony, a new splendor. Thinking in mythological terms helps to put you in accord with the inevitables of this vale of tears. You learn to recognize the positive values in what appear to be the negative moments and aspects of your life. The big question is whether you are going to be

able to saya hearty yes to your adventure. MOYERS: The adventure of the hero? CAMPBELL: Yes, the adventure of the hero -- the adventure of being alive.

___________________________________________

Due Date: Sunday, October 26, 2014“THE HERO’S ADVENTURE”

DIRECTIONS: Read “The Hero’s Adventure” by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers (see above). After completing the reading, answer the following questions. All responses should:

Be typed in COMPLETE SENTENCES, CONTAIN EVIDENCE FROM THE TEXT to support your answer, and All citations MUST CONTAIN PAGES NUMBERS.

YOUR WORK MUST BE TURNED INTO Turnitin.com by midnight on Sunday October 26th. Any work not submitted to Turnitin.com, and turned in at a later date,

will be considered LATE.

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“The Hero’s Adventure” Reading Questions

1. What makes a hero? 2. What are the two types of heroic deeds? What heroic cycle is

followed in completing both deeds?3. Psychologically, what is the purpose of the hero’s adventure?4. What are Moyers’ and Campbell’s thoughts on the difference

between a leader and a hero? What do they say about its application to individuals such as Napoleon (or perhaps Hitler)? What does this tell you about the perception of a hero?

5. Campbell distinguishes two types of heroes—one who chooses to undertake the journey and another who is thrown involuntarily into an adventure. According to Campbell, in regards to the hero, how are these two types of adventures the same?

6. What distinction is made between a celebrity and a hero? Why does a society or nation need heroes?

7. We are each completing our own personal heroic journey, and each of us must vanquish our own dragon. According to Campbell, what does the dragon psychologically represent? What is his solution to slaying this dragon within you?

8. Over the course of our lives, and our personal heroic adventure, we encounter suffering. Who is responsible for our suffering according to Freud? According to Marx? According to Campbell? What is Campbell’s advice to addressing suffering?

9. What are Campbell’s thoughts on the truthfulness of myth?

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from the Odyssey, Part 1 by HomerLiterary Analysis: Epic Hero

An epic hero is the larger-than-life central character in an epic—a long narrative poem about important events in the history or folklore of a nation or culture. Through adventurous deeds, the epic hero demonstrates traits—such as loyalty, honor, and resourcefulness—that are valued by the society in which the epic originates. Many epics begin in medias res (“in the middle of things”), meaning that much of the important action in the story occurred before the point at which the poem begins. Therefore, an epic hero’s adventures are often recounted in a flashback, a scene that interrupts the sequence of events in a narrative to relate earlier events. Flashbacks also allow the poet to provide a more complete portrait of the epic hero’s character.

DIRECTIONS: Consider the adventures shown in the left column of the following chart. Then,determine what evidence is contained in each adventure to support the position that Odysseus has the superior physical and mental prowess to be an epic hero. Write your answers in the chart.

Adventure Evidence of Mental Prowess

Evidence of Physical Prowess

1. The Lotus-Eaters

2. The Cyclops

3. The Sirens

4. Scylla and Charybdis

Grade 9 Unit 6 17


“The Cyclops” Due__________________The Worksheet

The teacher will have a basket with slips of paper in it. On the slips of paper are numbers to “The Cyclops” questions. Choose two different numbers. You will be responsible for answering those two questions.

After you answer on paper, go to our class edu2.0 website. Log on to the forum for The Odyssey. Go to the Cyclops thread. Type your question in as your topic and then type in your answer – do this for both questions. Then read over and respond to someone else’s questions. I will be looking for three responses – your two question/answers and an entry on someone else’s question/answer.

1. Describe the Cyclopes. What kind of farmers are they? How do they treat their wives and children? Summarize their race based on the first stanza on page 650.

2. How many men did Odysseus take with him? Why did they stay after they got some food?

3. What kind of welcome does the Cyclops give Odysseus and his men?4. What does Odysseus ask for the Cyclops to give him? What “reason” does he give

for expecting this?5. Why does Odysseus lie about his ship?6. Odysseus goes to stab the Cyclops in line 245. Why does he change his mind? What

does this show you about Odysseus?7. In line 252, who is Dawn and what is she famous for? What literary device is used

here?8. What is his plan in lines 265+?9. What does Odysseus give the Cyclops as a “gift”? What does this show you about

him?10. Find a simile on page 656 and write it down for your answer.11. How does Odysseus escape from the cave the next morning?12. On page 659, lines 430+, what is one of the main reasons that Odysseus is angry?13. What does Odysseus do that is foolish? Why does he do it? How does this connect

to the notes I gave you on epic hero?14. How do his men react when Odysseus does this?15. Why does the Cyclops invite him back? Do you think he’s telling the truth?

Explain why.16. A number of times Homer foreshadows events to come. What does the passage on

page 662 foreshadow? (lines 511+)17. The scene between Odysseus and Cyclops is full of irony. Find one example of

dramatic irony and one example of verbal irony. Explain how your examples are ironic.

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The 17 Stages of the Monomyth

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Separation

The Call to Adventure

The hero begins in a mundane situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown.

Refusal of the Call

Often when the call is given, the future hero first refuses to heed it. This may be from a sense of duty or obligation, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, or any of a range of reasons that work to hold the person in his or her current circumstances.

Supernatural Aid

Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his guide and magical helper appears, or becomes known. More often than not, this supernatural mentor will present the hero with one or more talismans or artifacts that will aid them later in their quest.

The Crossing of the First Threshold

This is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.

Belly of The Whale

The belly of the whale represents the final separation from the hero's known world and self. By entering this stage, the person shows willingness to undergo a metamorphosis.

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Initiation

The Road of Trials

The road of trials is a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes.

The Meeting With the Goddess

This is the point when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother. This is a very important step in the process and is often represented by the person finding the other person that he or she loves most completely.

Woman as Temptress

In this step, the hero faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead him or her to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. Woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.

Atonement with the Father

In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving into this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power.

Apotheosis

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When someone dies a physical death, or dies to the self to live in spirit, he or she moves beyond the pairs of opposites to a state of divine knowledge, love, compassion and bliss. A more mundane way of looking at this step is that it is a period of rest, peace and fulfillment before the hero begins the return.

The Ultimate Boon

The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the holy grail.

Return

Refusal of the Return

Having found bliss and enlightenment in the other world, the hero may not want to return to the ordinary world to bestow the boon onto his fellow man.

The Magic Flight

Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.

Rescue from Without

Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, oftentimes he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience.

The Crossing of the Return Threshold

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The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world.

Master of Two Worlds

For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.

Freedom to Live

Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.

Archetype ExplainThe Hero

Usually the main character – a person who needs to learn something in the story.

Mentor

A wise person or animal who provides guidance to the hero – usually giving him magical gifts or advice for the journey ahead.Trickster

The “wise-fool” – someone who uses tricks and jokes to guide the hero

ShadowRepresents our darkest desire, untapped resources, or rejected qualities (Darth Vader)

Shapeshifter

A character who “changes appearance” to

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disrupt the adventure.

Herald

Issues challenges and announces coming of significant change – gets the story rolling.

Threshold Guardian

Protects the special world and its secrets from the hero – provides tests for hero to prove worth.

1. What author is most associated with the concept of the hero’s journey?A Joseph Campbell B John Dewey C Daniel Webster D Virginia Woolf

2. According to the hero’s journey paradigm, the treasure you seek lies… A In the cave you fear to enter B In your ordinary world C At the departure threshold D At the return threshold

3. What is another word for the “hero’s journey?”A Monomyth B Crisis C Saving face D Denoument

4. When does the hero realize that he/she is changed (or has outgrown his/her old life)?

5. What are the two worlds of the hero’s journey?

Grade 9 Unit 6

Watch the video @ http://ed.ted.com/on/Pvajs7BQ#watch and answer the following 5 questions

Date Assigned ________________ Due Date _______________

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http://ed.ted.com/on/Pvajs7BQ#watch


from the Odyssey, Part 1, by Homer Open-Book Test Short Answer Write your responses to the questions in this section on the lines provided.

1. In the opening verses of the Odyssey, Part 1, Homer describes Odysseus, the epic hero. Reread lines 1–9. Which specific phrase best calls attention to the portrayal of Odysseus as clever and able to meet challenges? Briefly support your choice.

2. According to Odysseus, in the Odyssey, Part 1, what is the cause of the doom he and his men face on the island of Cicones? Explain the events leading up to the doom.

3. Return to lines 101–105 of the Odyssey, Part 1, in which Odysseus saves his men from the Lotus Eaters. What is heroic about Odysseus’ actions?

4. Explain lines 110–112 from the Odyssey, Part 1, that describe the Cyclopes. How does this description of the Cyclopes relate to the historical and cultural context of the epic—that is, to the Greek concept of a civilized society?

5. What characteristics lead Odysseus to put his men in danger during the episode with the Cyclops? Name two instances in the Odyssey, Part 1, in which he risks the group’s safety by his actions.

6. Who is Tiresias in the Land of the Dead? What is his purpose in the plot of the Odyssey, Part 1, and to Odysseus?

7. In the Odyssey, Part 1, what does Odysseus mean when he describes being at sea and “letting the wind and steersman work the ship” (line 683)? Use background and prior knowledge to explain these words.

8. Scylla and Charybdis are located in a strait, which is a narrow channel of water, between Italy and Sicily. Explain why the story of the sea monster and the whirlpool in the Odyssey, Part 1, may have developed.

9. According to the Odyssey, Part 1, what type of person would plunder a city like Troy? Use the meaning of plunder in your answer.

10. As an epic hero in the Odyssey, Part 1, Odysseus is a larger-than-life character.

*List 3 of Odysseus’ strengths

*List 3 of Odysseus’ weaknesses.

from the Odyssey, Part 2 by Homer

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Vocabulary Builder

Word List bemusing contempt dissemble equity incredulity maudlin

A. DIRECTIONS: In each of the following items, think about the meaning of the italicized wordand then answer the question.

1. From whom would you reasonably expect equity—a judge or a thief?

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2. Would you treat someone whom you admire with contempt? Why or why not?

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3. Does being maudlin involve your intelligence or your emotions? Explain your answer.

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4. Are the intentions of people who dissemble likely to be good or bad?

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5. What kind of story or report would inspire incredulity in you? Explain.

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6. Would you react to a long, bemusing lecture with enthusiasm or with annoyance?

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B. DIRECTIONS: Use the context of the sentences and what you know about the Latin prefix dis- to explain your answer to each question.

1. If one high school football team displaces another in the league rankings, what happens?

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2. If you disentangle a complex problem, what have you done: solved it, or made it worse ?

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3. If two plays or novels are dissimilar, are they more notable for their likenesses or their differences?

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from the Odyssey, Part 2 by HomerIntegrated Language Skills: Grammar

Complex and Compound-Complex SentencesA complex sentence consists of one independent clause, which can stand by itself as a sentence, and at least one subordinate clause, which cannot stand by itself as a sentence. A compound-complex sentence consists of two or more independent clauses and one or more subordinate clauses.

Complex sentence: After Odysseus gave Telemachus the signal, Telemachus removed the weapons from the hall.

Compound-complex sentence: Scholars, who live throughout the world, disagree about whether the epics were composed by the same person, and they also wonder about Homer’s historical existence.

A. DIRECTIONS: Identify each sentence as complex or compound-complex.

1. Although Odysseus is in disguise, his old dog Argus recognizes him instinctively.

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2. The suitors, who have competed to marry Penelope, behave arrogantly, and they conspire to murder Odysseus’ son and heir, Telemachus.

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3. Odysseus becomes anxious when Penelope questions him about the marriage bed.

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4. The Odyssey, which has entertained audiences for thousands of years, contains many universalthemes; its broad appeal can be explained by Homer’s profound understanding of human nature.

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Is the Human-Canine Bond and Our Sense of Loyalty and Love for Dogs, a Modern Invention?Some believe the human-canine bond is a modern invention.Published on June 2, 2010 by Stanley Coren, Ph.D., F.R.S.C. in Canine Corner

I was recently attending a university sponsored event and found myself speaking to some other professors in attendance. When the topic of conversation turned to dogs I mentioned to the group that I had just come across a wonderful quotation, by Roger Caras, an author who also served as the president of the ASPCA. It went "We give them the love we can spare, the time we can spare. In return dogs have given us their absolute all. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made." I brought it up because I thought that it nicely summarized my own feelings about dogs.

A professor from the English Department, gave a little snort of disdain and proceeded to tell me, "I am amazed at how a scientist like you has been sucked into this sentimentality for dogs. This idea that dogs feel any loyalty and love for humans is a modern invention. In fact the idea that people form sentimental attachments for dogs

is probably a similar recent event which became acceptable in modern times since, people moving into high population centers, like cities, often feel emotionally isolated and therefore direct some of their pent up feelings toward pets. Look back at the literature from two or three centuries ago and you won't find any mentions of the loving loyalty of dogs, nor will you find mention of any ancient warrior prince shedding a single tear for one of his dogs."

This is a common argument, which, in its various forms, suggests that the people of today have all gone soft. Part of the evidence for this is the fact that we have deep emotional attachment for our pet dogs, and also anthropomorphize them so as to suggest that they also have a deep emotional attachment for us. Certainly the tough, independent people of years gone by had no such feelings for or about their dogs. It must be that soft-headed, romantic writers of popular literature have spread these sentimental ideas concerning dogs.

However, such arguments are false. Dogs have been in our emotional lives for virtually all of recorded history. Western literature is generally marked

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as having begun with two epic poems, by Homer. The first is the Iliad (describing the Trojan War), and the second, the Odyssey, centers on the Greek hero Odysseus (or Ulysses, as he was known in Roman myths) and his long journey home following the fall of Troy. They were probably composed near the end of the eighth century BC, somewhere in Ionia, which was a Greek-speaking coastal region in what is now Turkey.

In Homer's epic, it took Odysseus ten years to reach his home in Ithaca. After being away for so long, those at home assumed he had died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus were forced to deal with an unpleasant group of suitors who had taken over his house while competing for Penelope's hand in marriage. In order to secretly re-enter his house to ultimately spring a surprise attack on the suitors, Odysseus disguises himself as a beggar, and enters in the company of the swine herder, Eumaeus. As he approaches his home after his long absence, he finds his dog Argos lying neglected on a pile of dung, old, weary and decrepit. Argos is the only one who recognizes him and tries to greet him. A modern text version of this portion of the story goes:

As Odysseus and Eumaeus were talking, a dog that had been lying asleep raised his head and pricked up his ears. This was Argos, whom Odysseus had bred before setting out for Troy, but he had had but little time to spend enjoying his company. In the old days he used to be taken out by the young men when they went hunting wild goats, or deer, or hares, but now that his master was gone he was lying neglected on the heaps of mule and cow dung that lay in front of the stable doors till the men should come and draw it away to fertilize the fields; and he was full of fleas. As soon as he saw Odysseus standing there, he dropped his ears, wagged his tail in joyful recognition, and tried to rise, but he was too frail and could not get close to his master. When Odysseus saw the dog on the

other side of the yard, he wiped a tear from his eyes without Eumaeus seeing it, and said:

"Eumaeus, what a noble hound that is over yonder on the manure heap:

his build is splendid; is he as fine a fellow as he looks, or is he only one of those dogs that come begging about a table, and are kept merely for show?"

"This hound," answered Eumaeus, "belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show you what he could do. There was not a wild beast in the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its tracks. But now he has fallen on evil times, for his master is dead and gone, and the women take no care of him."

So saying they entered the mansion, and made straight for the ill-behaving pretenders in the hall. Behind them, Argos lay back down and finally allowed himself to pass into the darkness of death, now that he had seen his master once more after nearly twenty years.

I turned to my colleague and asked, "Then what about the literary description of the relationship between Odysseus and Argos? The Odyssey was composed some 28 centuries ago. As I recall, there is only one time in that entire epic where the bold and brave warrior Odysseus sheds a tear, and that is when he sees his old loyal, faithful dog Argos, struggling to approach him after his many years away."

I will give my colleague credit for having the humor and humility to laughingly respond, "Well, perhaps some modern inventions, like the human-dog bond and the idea of reciprocal feelings of love and loyalty between people and dogs, simply arrived well in advance of the rest of our modern age."

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Use a three-column graphic organizer to summarize each text: (RI.9-10.1, RI.9-10.3, RI.9-10.5)

Identify 3 claims or points made in Article #1 in the order it is made

Describe how each claim or point is developed and refined by particular phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or sections. (Use evidence from the article)

Summarize how the evidence supports the claim

Claim 1 Evidence

Claim 2 Evidence

Claim 3 Evidence

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November 8, 2009OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Back From War, but Not Really HomeBy CAROLINE ALEXANDERHolderness, N.H.WASHED onto the shores of his island home, after 10 years’ absence in a foreign war and 10 years of hard travel in foreign lands, Odysseus, literature’s most famous veteran, stares around him: “But now brilliant Odysseus awoke from sleep in his own fatherland, and he did not know it,/having been long away.” Additionally, the goddess Athena has cast an obscuring mist over all the familiar landmarks, making “everything look otherwise/than it was.” “Ah me,” groans Odysseus, “what are the people whose land I have come to this time?”That sense of dislocation has been shared by veterans returning from the field of war since Homer conjured Odysseus’ inauspicious return some 2,800 years ago. Its

vexing power was underscored on Thursday, when a military psychiatrist who had been treating the mental scars of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan went on a shooting rampage at an Army base in Texas.Who is the veteran, and how does he stand in relation to his native land and people? This question remains relevant to those marching in parades this week for Veterans Day in the United States and Armistice Day in Europe, as well as to the ever-diminishing number of spectators who applaud them. In theory, Veterans Day celebrates an event as starkly unambiguous as victory — survival. In practice, Nov. 11 is clouded with ambiguous symbolism, and has become our most awkward holiday.

Grade 9 Unit 6

1. Reread the text and highlight or circle 3-5 words and phrases that reveal the author’s attitude toward the subject of the text. (RI.9-10.4)

2. Determine a central idea of the text. (RI.9-10.2)

3. Determine and explain the author’s purpose based on the evaluation of the author’s tone, claims, and evidence. (RI.9-10.6)

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The great theme of “The Odyssey” — the return of the war veteran to his home — is the only surviving, and undoubtedly the greatest, epic example of what was evidently a popular theme in ancient times. Another poem, now lost, “Nostoi,” or “Returns,” was an epic of uncertain authorship that was said to have encompassed five books and traced the homecomings of veterans of the Trojan War like the Greek commander in chief, Agamemnon; his brother, Menelaus; the aged counselor Nestor, the priest Calchas, the hero Diomedes and even Achilles’ son, Neoptolemos.The Greek word nostos, meaning “return home,” is the root of our English “nostalgia” (along with algos — “pain” or “sorrow”). The content and character of “Nostoi” is now impossible to gauge; all we know of it comes from a late, possibly fifth-century A.D. summary and stray fragments. Some of the most famous of these traditional veterans’ stories, however, have survived in later, non-epic works.Aeschylus’ towering tragedy “Agamemnon,” staged in 458 B.C., centers on the king’s return from Troy to his palace in Argos, where he is murdered in his bath by his wife, Clytemnestra. Virgil’s “Aeneid” famously relates the travails of the heroic Trojan veteran Aeneas, who, following the destruction of his city by the Greek victors, must make a new

home in some other, foreign land.But it is “The Odyssey” that most directly probes the theme of the war veteran’s return. Threaded through this fairytale saga, amid its historic touchstones, are remarkable scenes addressing aspects of the war veteran’s experience that are disconcertingly familiar to our own age. Odysseus returns home to a place he does not recognize, and then finds his homestead overrun with young men who have no experience of war. Throughout his long voyage back, he has reacted to each stranger with elaborate caginess, concocting stories about who he is and what he has seen and done — the real war he keeps to himself.Midway through the epic, Odysseus relates to a spellbound audience how, in order to obtain guidance for the voyage ahead, it was necessary to descend to Hades. There, among the thronging souls of men and women dead and past, he confronted his comrades of the war — Agamemnon, Achilles, Patroclus, Antilochus and Ajax — robust heroes of epic tales now reduced to unhappy shades who haunt his story.Similarly, while Odysseus is lost at sea, his son, Telemachus, embarks on a voyage of discovery, also seeking out his father’s former comrades, but those who lived to return. First of these is old Nestor, a veteran

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of many campaigns, now at home in sandy Pylos. No mortal man could “tell the whole of it,” says Nestor of the years at Troy, where “all who were our best were killed.” In Sparta, Menelaus, whose wife, Helen, was the cause of the war, is haunted by the losses: “I wish I lived in my house with only a third part of all/these goods, and that the men were alive who died in those days/in wide Troy land.”Odysseus’ own memories are more potent. Amongst the kindly Phaiakians, who give him hospitality toward the end of his hard voyage, he listens to the court poet sing of the Trojan War’s “famous actions/of men on that venture.” Odysseus, taking his mantle in his hands, “drew it over his head and veiled his fine features/shamed for the tears running down his face.”And most significantly, epic tradition hints at the dilemmas of military commemoration. In “The Iliad,” Achilles must choose between kleos or nostos — glory or a safe return home. By dying at Troy, Achilles was assured of undying fame as the greatest of all heroes. His choice reflects an uneasy awareness that it is far easier to honor the dead soldier than the soldier who returns. Time-tested and time-honored, the commemoration rites we observe each Memorial Day — the parades and speeches and graveside prayers and offerings — represent a satisfying

formula of remembrance by the living for the dead that was already referred to as “ancient custom” by Thucydides in the fifth century B.C.The commemoration of the veteran — the survivor who did not fall on the field of war — is less starkly defined. The returned soldier, it is hoped, will grow old and die among us, like Nestor, in whose time “two generations of mortal men had perished.” In our own times, the generation born in the optimistic aftermath of World War II has already encountered veterans of both world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf war and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — and still has several decades of martial possibilities in reserve. As the earlier of those wars recede into the past, their old soldiers fade away; and thus, commemorative rites for the veteran — by definition, the survivor — also tend to end, perversely, at graves.How to commemorate the living veteran? Again, some guidance can be found in epic, the crucible of heroic mores. Old Nestor, the iconographic veteran, is a teller of many tales of the many battles he once waged. “In my time I have dealt with better men than/you are, and never once did they disregard me,” he tells the entire Greek army in “The Iliad.” “I fought single-handed, yet against such men no one/could do battle.” Although he is a somewhat comic figure,

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his speeches are deadly earnest; Old Nestor knows that his is the only voice to keep memory of such past campaigns alive.One suspects such lengthy recitations are rare today. Rarer still is the respectful audience enjoyed by Nestor; impatience with such reminiscences began well before our age. “Menelaus bold/waxed garrulous, and sacked a hundred Troys/’Twixt noon and supper,” wrote Rupert Brooke, cynically, during the years leading up to a later Great War.Today, veterans’ tales are more likely to be safeguarded in books and replicated in movies than self-narrated to a respectful throng. Detailed knowledge of the experience in which a veteran’s memories were forged is thus made common. To learn these stories is both civilian duty and commemoration. Death on the field and the voyage home — both are epic.Caroline Alexander is the author of “The Endurance,” “The Bounty” and, most recently, “The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and the Trojan War.”

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Describe how each claim or point is developed and refined by particular phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or sections. (Use evidence from the article)


Claim 1 Evidence

Claim 2 Evidence

Claim 3 Evidence

Grade 9 Unit 6

Use a three-column graphic organizer to summarize each text: (RI.9-10.1, RI.9-10.3, RI.9-10.5)

1. What does the Greek word nostos mean?

2. Describe the sense of dislocation shared by veterans and Odysseus.

3. Today, veterans’ tales are more likely to be ________________________

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THE SATURDAY ESSAYThe Truth About Being a HeroKarl Marlantes on what makes men heroes—in their own hearts and in the eyes of othersAugust 20, 2011In 1968, at age 23, Karl Marlantes shipped off to Vietnam as a second lieutenant in charge of 40 Marines—an experience he later drew on for his novel "Matterhorn." In this excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, "What It Is Like to Go to War," he reflects on the motives and transcendent moments of heroism.We all want to be special, to stand out; there's nothing wrong with this. The irony is that every human being is special to start with, because we're unique to start with. But we then go through some sort of boot camp from the age of zero to about 18 where we learn everything we can about how not to be unique.This spawns an unconscious desire to prove yourself special, but now it's special in the eyes of your peers and it comes out in the form of being better than or having power over someone else. In the military I could exercise the power of being automatically respected because of the medals on my chest, not because I had done anything right at the moment to earn that respect. This is pretty nice. It's also a psychological trap that can stop one's growth and allow one to get

away with just plain bad behavior.Looking even deeper, I realize now that I also had very mixed feelings about some of the medals on my chest. I knew many Marines had done brave deeds that no one saw and for which they got no medals at all. I was having a very hard time carrying those medals and didn't have the insight or maturity to know what to do with my combination of guilt and pride.

A young G.I. dashes across an open area under enemy fire in Vietnam in 1967. Associated PressThe best words I've ever heard on the subject of medals come from a fellow lieutenant who'd been my company executive officer when I first arrived in Vietnam. The company came under mortar attack. Tom—all names given here are pseudonyms—then a platoon commander, had found a relatively safe defensive position for himself, but he stood up, exposed to the exploding shells, in order to get a compass bearing on where the shells were being fired from. He then called in and adjusted counterbattery fire, which got the

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company out of trouble. He was awarded the Bronze Star. When I heard the news and congratulated him, he said, "A lot of people have done a lot more and gotten a lot less, and a lot of people have done a lot less and gotten a lot more."Medals are all mixed up with hierarchy, politics and even job descriptions. What is considered normal activity for an infantry grunt, and therefore not worthy of a medal, is likely to be viewed as extraordinary for someone who does the same thing but isn't a grunt, so he gets a medal and maybe an article in Stars and Stripes.I got my medals, in part, because I did brave acts, but also, in part, because the kids liked me and they spent time writing better eyewitness accounts than they would have written if they hadn't liked me. Had I been an unpopular officer and done exactly the same things, few would have bothered, if any. The accounts would have been laconic, at best, and the medals probably of a lower order. The only people who will ever know the value of the ribbons on their chests are the people wearing them—and even they can fool themselves, in both directions.* * *I was eager for medals early on, but after a while I was no longer so anxious to get one of any kind. But the same phenomenon of being taken over by something, or someone, still seemed to operate.We had moved up in the dark and waited in the jungle, strung out on line as the jets roared in to bomb the enemy defenses at first light. But because of a screw-up the jets dropped their bombs on the wrong hill. I screamed bloody murder over the battalion Forward Air Control net but was told I was out of line and to get off because I couldn't possibly see what was going on.Going up against bunkers is hard enough, but doing it without any air prep was decidedly unnerving. A huge value of the air prep is the boost to the morale of the attacking infantry. We came out of the jungle onto the exposed earth below the bunkers and were instantly under fire from the untouched machine-gun positions.Everyone dived for logs and holes. The whole assault ground to a halt, except for one kid named Niemi, who had sprinted forward when we came under the intense fire and disappeared up in front of us somewhere. We figured he was down and

dead. I actually don't know how long we all lay there getting pulverized out in the open like that. I knew it would be only a few minutes before the enemy rockets and mortars found us.

A Navy CrossAgain, I seemed to step aside. I remember surveying the whole scene from someplace in the air above it. I saw the napalm smoke burning uselessly on the wrong hill.

The machine guns had us pinned down with well-planned interlocking fire. The North Vietnamese Army were pros. Everyone was strung out in a ragged line hiding behind downed trees and in shell holes—even me, tiny and small, huddled down there below with the rest.I distinctly remember recalling the words of an instructor at the Basic School, a particularly colorful and popular redheaded major who taught tactics, talking to a group of us about when it was a platoon leader earned his pay. I knew, floating above that mess, that now that time had come. If I didn't get up and lead, we'd get wiped.I re-entered my body as the hero platoon leader, leaving the rest of everyday me up there in the clouds. It was at this point I started screaming at the wounded machine gunner to crawl up to my log and start that machine-gun duel, which would keep the crew of one of the interlocking machine guns busy. I then got an M-79 man to move up next to me and had him start lobbing shells at the observation slit of an adjacent bunker that was also giving us fits, directly up the hill from us. Then I stood up.I did a lot of things that day, many of which got written into the commendation, but the one I'm most proud of is that I simply stood up, in the middle of all that flying metal, and started up the hill all by myself.I'm proud of that act because I did it for the right reasons. I once watched a televised exchange about what dramatists call "the hero's journey," between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell. The camera had cut to a boot camp scene with Mr. Campbell saying, "There are some heroic journeys into which you are thrown and pitched." The camera then cut to scenes from Vietnam, helicopters, a young black man limping forward in agony. Then, it cut to war

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protesters, and Mr. Moyers then asked Mr. Campbell, "Doesn't heroism have a moral objective?"Campbell replied, "The moral objective is that of saving a people, or person, or idea. He is sacrificing himself for something. That is the morality of it. Now, you, from another position, might say that 'something' wasn't worth it, or was downright wrong. That's a judgment from another side. But it doesn't destroy the heroism of what was done. Absolutely not."I was no more heroic this time than the time I won my first medal—when I went after an injured Marine named Utter, jokingly asking another fellow Marine, "Is it worth a medal if I go get him?" Both times I faced a lot of fire. In fact, both times my actions were an effort to save a person, Utter, or a people, my little tribe exposed and dying on that scourged hillside. But my motives had changed. And because my motives had changed, I feel a lot better about what I did.I made no heroic gestures or wisecracks this time. I simply ran forward up the steep hill, zigzagging for the bunker, all by myself, hoping the M-79 man wouldn't hit me in the back. It's hard to zigzag while running uphill loaded down with ammunition and grenades. Every bit of my consciousness was focused on just two things, the bunker above me and whether I could keep running and zigzagging with everything I had. Another 400-meter sprint against Death. A long desperate weekend. A time out of time.I was running in a long arc to get between the machine-gun bunker and the one I was heading for—and to avoid the M-79 shells now exploding against the observation slit, which I hoped were blinding the occupants. As I made that arc I was turned sideways to the hill and I caught movement in my peripheral vision. I hit the deck, turning and rolling, coming up in a position to fire. It was a Marine! He was about 15 meters below me, zigzagging, falling, up and running again. Immediately behind him a long ragged line of Marines came moving and weaving up the hill behind me. Behind the line were spots of crumpled bodies, lying where they'd been hit.They'd all come with me. I was actually alone only for a matter of seconds. We took the bunker, and the next, and—together with Second Platoon joining up with us on our right flank—broke through the first line of

bunkers, only to come under fire from a second, interior line of fighting holes higher on the hill. At this point I saw the missing kid, Niemi, pop his head up. He sprinted across the open top of the hill, all alone. The NVA turned in their positions to fire on him. I watched him climb on top of a bunker and chuck two grenades inside. When they went off I saw him fall to the ground. I assumed that this time he'd been killed for sure.Being hit from behind by Niemi both unnerved the NVA and encouraged us to hurry to reach him. All semblance of platoon and squad order were gone by now. Everyone was intermingled, weaving, rushing and covering, taking on each hole and bunker one at a time in groups.It was just about that time I got knocked out and blinded by a hand grenade. I came to, groggy. I could hear my radioman, who seemed very far away, telling the skipper I was down and that he didn't know if I was dead or not. I grunted something to let him know I wasn't dead and tried to sit up, but then went back down. I felt as though I couldn't get my breath.

larger referenceKarl Marlantes receives the Navy Cross in the winter of 1969-70. 'I got my medals, in part, because I did brave acts...in part, because the kids liked me.' USMC PhotoThen I panicked, because I knew I'd been hit in the eyes. I started rubbing them, desperate to get them open, but they seemed glued shut. My radioman poured Kool-Aid from his canteen onto my face and into my eyes, and I managed to get one eye to clear. The other eye was a bloody dirt-clogged mess and I thought I'd lost it. (The blindness was temporary, but I later learned that several metal slivers were just microns from my optic nerve.)We kept scrambling for the top, trying to reach Niemi, trying to win, trying to get it all over with. I got held up by two enemy soldiers in a hole and was attempting to get a shot or two off at them and quickly ducking back down when a kid I knew from Second Platoon, mainly because of his bad reputation, threw himself down beside me, half his clothes blown away. He was begging people for a rifle. His had been blown out of his hands.He was a black kid, all tangled up in black-power politics, almost always angry and

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sullen. A troublemaker. Yet here he was, most of his body naked with only flapping rags left of his jungle utilities, begging for a rifle when he had a perfect excuse to just bury his head in the clay and quit. I gave him mine. I still had a pistol. He grabbed the rifle, stood up to his full height, fully exposing himself to all the fire, and simply blasted an entire magazine at the two soldiers in front of us, killing both of them. He then went charging into the fight, leaving me stunned for a moment. Why? Who was he doing this for? What is this thing in young men? We were beyond ourselves, beyond politics, beyond good and evil. This was transcendence.Many of us had by now worked our way almost to the top of the hill. Fighting was no longer them above and us below. Marines and NVA intermingled. Crashing out of the clouds into this confusion came a flaming, smoking twin-rotor CH-46 helicopter. It was making a much-needed ammunition run to the company waiting in reserve and firing support for us from the hill we'd taken several days before. We think that the bird got hit by a mortar round as it was coming in and, in the confusion and scudding cloud cover, the pilot picked the wrong hill or he did it because he had no choice.The result was the same. Down it came, right where we were assaulting, and the NVA just tore that bird to pieces. Spinning out of control, it smashed right on the very top of the hill, breaking its rotor blades.I saw Niemi pop into sight again. He sprinted to the downed chopper. Later we found out he'd spent his time crawling behind holes and bunkers, shooting people from behind. He'd watched aghast as the chopper came screaming out of the sky, nearly hitting him. Later, he told me that it looked as if the thing

simply started sprouting holes as the NVA turned their weapons on it.When he saw the crew bail out and crawl for cover underneath the chopper (aircrews are armed only with pistols, virtually useless in a fight like this), the only thing he could think to do was sprint across the open hilltop to see if he could find a place from which he could lay down fire to protect them. He didn't debate this. He just did it. It was an unconscious, generous and potentially sacrificial act.Many of us coming up the hill saw Niemi sprint into the open. Knowing now that he was still alive and that he and the chopper crew were dead for sure if we didn't break through to them, we all simply rushed forward to reach them before the NVA killed them. No one gave an order. We, the group, just rushed forward all at once. We couldn't be stopped. Just individuals among us were stopped. Many forever. But we couldn't be. This, too, is a form of transcendence. I was we, no longer me.

Lance Corporal Steel, 19, who'd been acting platoon commander until I reorganized things and was now acting platoon sergeant, got there first. The crewmen were so grateful and happy they gave their pistols away. I got the pilot's .38 Smith & Wesson.Niemi got a Navy Cross.I got a Navy Cross.The helicopter pilot got a front-page story in Stars and Stripes with the large headline, "Copter 'Crashes' Enemy Party, Takes Hill."The kid who borrowed my rifle didn't get anything.

—From "What It Is Like to Go to War" by Karl Marlantes, to be published Aug. 30 by Atlantic Monthly Press.


Describe how each claim or point is developed and refined by particular phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or


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sections. (Use evidence from the article)

Claim 1 Evidence

Claim 2 Evidence

Claim 3 Evidence

Grade 9 Unit 6




“We couldn't be stopped. Just individuals among us were stopped. Many forever. But we couldn't be. This, too, is a form of transcendence. I was we, no longer me.” What does the word transcendence mean in the statement above?

4. What was Mr. Campbell’s response to Mr. Moyers’ question "Doesn't heroism have a moral

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Grade 9 Unit 6




“We couldn't be stopped. Just individuals among us were stopped. Many forever. But we couldn't be. This, too, is a form of transcendence. I was we, no longer me.” What does the word transcendence mean in the statement above?

4. What was Mr. Campbell’s response to Mr. Moyers’ question "Doesn't heroism have a moral

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x - cafe web viewword and identify its meaning. how ... his guide and magical helper ... this...

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