January 24th/25th

The KC Star did a feature on the actor who is the lead in Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Check it out! KC Rep- Actor with Tourette's

As I referenced in class, here is the story on Shawnee Mission Northwest High School. Please turn your notes into me. KC Star- Shawnee Mission Northwest

1. Today we will be having small group discussions over The Iliad books 1 and 6. These questions are to guide your discussion, but to also help supplement your notes. You don't need to write down "the answers" but bullet point ideas that develop in your conversations. In your conversation, you need to reference/cite specific examples in the text, not broad general comments. 

2. As a group, you will complete a collaborative Google Slide Show that addresses EACH BOOK with:

• Books' summaries
• Character descriptions
• Important findings
• Critical literary devices
• Carry over between the two books. 
• Differences between two books.  
• Student impressions/quotes on The Iliad. 

Book 1

Summarize Book 1 of The Iliad. 

1. What emotion identified in the first line is central to the entire Iliad?
2. What two gods are angry at the Greeks and why?
3. Try to think of ways in which the opening lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey are similar, and also different.  (Ignore this question in classes in which we have not read both of these works.)
4. Explain in what way the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon and its results are the equivalent of the plague.
5. Does the response of Achilles to the disrespect of Agamemnon seem to you out of proportion?  Or, to put it another way, do you think that T. S. Eliot was right to call Achilles “little more than a superhuman adolescent”?
6. How do the conflicts between mortals compare and contrast to the conflicts between the gods in Book 1 of The Iliad?
7. In what ways are Achilles's and Agamemnon's characterizations of each other in Book 1 of The Iliad justified?

Book 6

Summarize Book 1 of The Iliad.  

1. What reasons does Andromache give for asking Hector not to return to the battlefield?  Do you think Andromache ever believed Hector will stay away from the battlefield?  Explain.
2. Hector’s conflict between home and the battlefield brings to light the role of men in the ancient society.  Hector loves his family, but leaves them for the battlefield.  What does this say about Hector and about his culture?  
3. This is Hector's book. Here we see who, what and why he is. How does the narrator seem to feel about Hector? Compare and contrast his heroism with Achilles. Consider his relations with women. Note his self-consciousness about the inevitable fate of Troy and his family (520). What, exactly, motivates him to keep fighting? Do you see anything potentially wrong or self-contradictory with his reasoning? Don't sentimentalize his hopes for his son too much.

General Questions: 

1. What similarities and differences do you see between Books 1 and 6? - Plot, characterization, tone, imagery? 
2. What role does the narrator/poet play in The Iliad? When is he evident in the action? Why at that point? Why does he shrink away at other parts of story? 
3. What figures of speech do you see being utilized? Similes, metaphors, epithets? 
4. What is the author's attitude towards his world? Towards fate? Towards the gods?  

For FRIDAY:

1. Your 4 themes and textual evidence are due IN YOUR NOTES... with textual evidence. 

2. Read Book 22 of The Iliad.  Page: 201