Unit: The Odyssey
Grade: 9-10

Day 2:  Trojan War

Goals:
• The student will develop a good, working understanding of the meaning of the term "epic."
• The student will work to develop oral language skills through performance and reading aloud.
• The student will know who Homer is and his importance and influence on literary history.
• The student will think critically about literature and its function in history, culture and personal experience.

Materials:
• VCR
• Video excerpt from Monty Python
• Handout of Iliad excerpt
• Handout of Aeneid excerpt
• Robert Fitzgerald tracnslation of Homer's The Odyssey

Procedures:

Anticipatory Set-- (5 min.) Play the excerpt form "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"--"a giant wooden badger!" Use this to lead into a discussion on the tradition of the Trojan War based on Homer's Iliad.

Flying Cattle!

Send in the Wooden Rabbit!

Ummm.... what did we do wrong here?

Read Aloud-- (5 min.) Hand-out Iliad excerpt. Read it aloud to the class.

Discussion/Review--(10 min.) Return the handout from Day 1 on elements of the epic. Elicit response on the subject of epic qualities found in the Iliad excerpt (begins in middle, invocation, boastin, supernatural intervention, conflict, journey by water, flashback). Discussion--(10 min.) What happened in this scene? (Achilles and Agamemnon fight over a woman...) Go on to a disucssion of the results of the action of Achilles (i.e.-- the plot of the Iliad):

1. Achilles won't fight
2. the Greeks get their butts kicked by the Trojans
3. Achilles comes back
4. Trojans get their butts kicked
5. Greeks win

One of the main factors in the Greek comeback was the Trojan Horse-- it gives the Greeks the advantage leading up to the final, culminating battle. Interestingly, the story of the wooden horse is not in teh Iliad at all, but it is in the Odyssey. What might this tell us?-- order of creation of stroies, it is a later tradition (so it becomes more likely that it may not have ever happened)...

Read Aloud-- (5 min.) Get out Fitzgerald translation. Go around class and read excerpts from the Odyssey which relate the story of the Trojan Horse:

Book IV-- lines 252-311-- as told by Nestor (an eyewitness)

Book VIII-- lines 520-559-- as told by Odysseus

Read Aloud--(15 min.) Get out the excerpt from the Aeneid. This excerpt is from Book II of Virgil's Aeneid. Virgil was a Roman poet who lived around the 1st century B.C.E. The Aeneid is the story of Aeneas and his adventures culminating in the founding of Rome-- based in large part on Homer's works. Aeneas was in fact a prince of the Trojan royal family, and in this he tells his story of the wooden horse and the fall of Troy. By looking at this, we can:

1. gain another perspective on what happened in Troy
2. get a different look at our hero, Odysseus
3. begin to look at the influence Homer had on later writers

Go around the class and read the excerpt aloud.

Closure--(5 min.) Now that we have a little more background on the Trojan War, and Odysseus' part in it, we are going to go on to the question-- what happens to Odysseus after the war? This is what the Odyssey is about.

Assign Books I and II for reading for Day 3.

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