Reading Diary B: Homer's Odyssey

My second reading diary this week is over Homer's Odyssey. In the first reading, Ghosts of Erebus, Odysseus and his men arrive at the House of Hades and begins their Journey to locate Teiresias. The men must sacrifice lambs and let the ghosts drink from the blood to be able to converse. In the second reading, The Ghosts of Elpenor and Teiresias, Elpenor asks Odysseus to go back to the Circe's island and burn his body with his armor. He later talks with Teiresias. Teiresias tells Odysseus to not touch the flocks of Helios or he will encounter great trouble on his way home and if does make it alone he will find his land under rule by someone else and his wife will be taken by another man. Odysseus would also kill off the suitors and run away to a foreign land. In the next reading, The Spirit of Anticleia, Odysseus sees his mothers ghost and talks with her and tells him that his wife is still waiting for him along with his son while his father grieves in a rural place alone awaiting his son's return. She proceeds to tell him she died from yearning for him for so long. The next four readings are about Odysseus meeting various famous people in history and of battle and them telling Odysseus of their fall and asking him about their living family members. The last reading, The Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis, is about when Odysseus leaves the House of Hades and sails pasts the Sirens Island. The Sirens tempt Odysseus to come to the island but he had his men stop him to the mast and plug their ears with candle wax so that they were unable to hear the Siren's song. The next part is about the swirling seas around the home of Scylla. When the men reach Scylla she grabs four men and eat them.

Odysseus and the Sirens