Entry 1

Entry 1:  Hello, I am Jack Graham and this is my first of five blogs for this series. Essentially it is a summary of the story by Homer, The Odyssey. I may also add some of my own thoughts throughout. So here it goes!

Book 1: A Goddess Intervenes

Before I start the story, I have to tell you the background. It all started when Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, was kidnapped by Paris for Troy. Thus calling on Odysseus to go and find her during the war in Troy. So 10 years later, he leaves and goes on several journies and it ends up taking him 10 extra years to get home. The entire book is mostly his journies which I will now tell you about.

In the first part of this book, Homer is praying to the Muse (Goddess of inspiration) for inspiration so he may tell the story of Odysseus. He recovers the story and it goes like this.

As you may know, Odysseus has a son Telemachus, who has now grown into manhood and is mourning trying to find his father. So now for ten years Odysseus has been wandering the seas. Athena talks to Zeus about it and agrees to help.

Book 5: Calypso, the Sweet Nymph

This book uses Medias Res, which is where it starts in the middle and has a flashback to the other adventures. So it starts with Odysseus on island of Calypso and Zeus's messenger Hermes, tells her she must let Odysseus go. She obeys but not in a way you would expect. To show power, she tells Odysseus she made the decision to let him go. So for a long while, she helps him build a raft, but he tries to get him to stay by talking about Odysseus's wife and how she could not be as good as Calypso. But Odysseus leaves anyway. Odysseus sails for seventeen days and ends up on the island of Scheria.