Drake 257
Reading The Odyssey:  Some Tips

What I find hard about reading the Odyssey is that the story is all fragmented and not told in chronological order…mainly because Odysseus’s story is told, throughout the rest of the story, either to Telemachus or by Odysseus himself; a full half of the poem is dialogue, much of which is people telling Odysseus's story. 

I find it helps me to break the epic into its different threads, and then just think of them as two or three different sets of stories:

1)      1) Books I-IV:  What happens in Ithaca (and when Telemachus travels).  Consider this “real time”:  We meet Telemachus, Penelope and the suitors; Telemachus hits the road to learn about his father – then there’s a long break starting in Book V.  This thread picks up in Book XV when Odysseus lands/returns to Ithaca.  From here the story is pretty straightforward thru the end (aside from when Odysseus tells a bunch of lies to hide his identity).

2)      2) Books V-XIII:  This thread follows Odysseus from the *end of his journey*, starting with when we first meet him, captive with Calypso.

3)      3) In both threads 1 and 2 we are told everything that has happened to Odysseus in the past.  Some of Odysseus' story is told to Telemachus in part one, and most of it is told by Odysseus in part two.

It is part three that is confusing: what happened to Odysseus when and where??  For the sake of what we’re interested in, in this class this semester, this chronology isn’t so important. 

Here is a very brief summary of the whole dang thang   that goes with this map:

The maps and outlines of event linked here might also help.