Tuesday-Thursday, February 12th-14th

1. Today we will be having small group discussions over The Iliad books 1, 6, and 22. 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. 

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.

Book 22

Summarize Book 22 of The Iliad. 

1. What do Priam and Hecuba say to Hector?

2. What are Hector's thoughts as he awaits Achilles?

3. What are the movements of the gods during the encounter between Hector and Achilles?

4. How does Achilles respond to Hector's dying request?

5. How do Priam, Hecuba and Andromache react?

General Questions over The Iliad: 

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?  
5. What does Book 22 add to the poem? Characterization of two major heroic figures?

For FRIDAY:

Read Book 24 of The Iliad.