27 October 2009

The Odyssey

The Odyssey is a book written in Ancient Greece by a man named Homer. I just read the book, so I am going to tell you the basic outline.

- Odysseus is coming back from a war in Troy.
-Odysseus is thrown of track and finds some people addicted to eating Lotus flowers.
-Odysseus is captured by and escapes from the Cyclops.
-He lands on an island with people called Lastrygonians who crush all of Odysseus's ships except one.
-Circe, the witch, turns Odysseus's men into pigs. Hermes helps Odysseus make his men human again after a year.
-Odysseus goes to the Underworld. receives a message from a dead person and finds out that his mother is dead.
-Odysseus survives the sirens and monsters Scylla and Charybdis with the loss of only a few men.
-Odysseus's men eat the God Helios's cattle and Zeus strikes their ship with a lightning bolt.
-Odysseus, the only survivor from the ship, lands on Calypso's island, who keeps him captive for 7 years.
- Meanwhile, Odysseus's son searches for news of his father, while Odysseus's wife is getting swamped with people who want to marry her.
-Zeus commands Calypso to let Odysseus go.
-Odysseus comes home, meets his son, shoots an arrow, kills all his wife's suitors and is reunited with his family.
-The townspeople of Odysseus's homeland form a mob and try to avenge the suitors, but Athena stops them.
-Athena tells Odysseus to maintain peace.
-Odysseus obeys.