Page 42 - SpringBoard_ELD_Grade8_Flipbook

interpret the Text Using Close reading
Learning Target
• Apply understanding of how epic poems are structured to comprehend the text.
Read and Annotate
Read the excerpt from the Odyssey and annotate the text as you read.
■ Use the My Notes area to write questions or ideas you have about the poem. ■ Underline any rich verbs that describe an action vividly.
■ Put a star next to trials the hero faces.
■ Put exclamation marks next to the times when the protagonist acts heroically. ■ Circle unknown words.
aCTiViTY 2.3
my notes
epic Poem
the Odyssey by Homer
Translation by Tony Kline
Book IX: 307–359
ODYSSEUS TELLS HIS TALE: OFFERIng THE CYCLOPS WInE
1 As soon as rosy-fingered Dawn appeared, Cyclops relit the fire. Then he milked the ewes, and bleating goats in order, putting her young to each. When he had busied himself at his tasks, he again seized two of my men and began to eat them. When he had finished he drove his well-fed flocks from the cave, effortlessly lifting the huge door stone, and replacing it again like the cap on a quiver. Then whistling loudly he turned his flocks out on to the mountain slopes, leaving me with murder in my heart searching for a way to take vengeance on him, if Athene1 would grant me inspiration. The best plan seemed to be this:
2 The Cyclops’ huge club, a trunk of green olive wood he had cut to take with him as soon as it was seasoned, lay next to a sheep pen. It was so large and thick that it looked to us like the mast of a twenty-oared black ship, a broad-beamed merchant vessel that sails the deep ocean. Approaching it, I cut off a six-foot length, gave it to my men and told them to smooth the wood. Then standing by it I sharpened the end to a point, and hardened the point in the blazing fire, after which I hid it carefully in a one of the heaps of dung that lay around the cave.
I ordered the men to cast lots as to which of them should dare to help me raise the stake and twist it into the Cyclops’ eye when sweet sleep took him. The lot fell on the very ones I would have chosen, four of them, with myself making a fifth.
3 He returned at evening, shepherding his well-fed flocks. He herded them swiftly, every one, into the deep cave, leaving none in the broad yard, commanded
From
1 Athene: goddess of wisdom, the arts, and war
Unit 1 • The Challenge of Heroism • Part 2: from the Odyssey 19
cast lots: to throw a set of objects in order to impartially decide something
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