The Adventures of Ulysses

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What is the difference between a symbol and an allegory? Can you give examples of these devices from sources you have read, watched, or listened to?

Teaching Suggestion: The Adventures of Ulysses contains examples of both symbolism and allegory. An understanding of these techniques is important to comprehension of the text beyond its surface-level adventure story. The intent of this question is to evaluate students’ prior knowledge and the degree to which they are struggling to differentiate between these two devices, if at all. Once you are satisfied that students understand the basic definitions of these terms, you might ask them to explain the relationship between the two techniques: Are all symbols allegorical? Are all allegories symbolic?

• This 4-minute video from Oregon State University explains the use of allegory in literature.
• This 5-minute video from Oregon State University explains the use of symbolism in literature.

2. In ancient Greek literature, even great heroes have flaws that they must overcome. One such flaw is hubris. Although hubris is commonly used to mean “arrogance” today, the word had a different meaning in ancient Greece: It meant behavior that takes honor away from another person or a god by causing a person shame or by competing with a god. What are some behaviors that we condemn today that fit this older definition of hubris—especially as it relates to causing others to feel shame?

Teaching Suggestion: Some students may already be aware of the popular definition of hubris and may even have heard this modern definition applied to ancient Greek heroes such as Odysseus/Ulysses. This question’s purpose is to acquaint them with a historically accurate definition and get them thinking about how close “hubris” is to some forms of bullying behavior. As a springboard into a discussion of ancient Greek culture, you might also explain to students that hubris was actually a crime in ancient Athens and ask them what kinds of cultures might find actions that degrade others’ self-worth so offensive and damaging that they would actually outlaw this behavior.

• This explanation from Ask a Philosopher describes the role of pride and hubris in ancient Greece.
• This brief article from The Spectator explains recent Greek political events in the context of ancient Greek culture and its preoccupation with hubris.

Short Activity

Research the kinds of ships that Ulysses and his men would have sailed in. Then, use the information you have gathered to draw a trireme and write a paragraph explaining what life was like for ancient Greek sailors aboard such a vessel.

Teaching Suggestion: This brief activity is intended to spark interest in the setting of The Adventures of Ulysses and help students bridge the empathy gap between their own experience and that of the characters in the book. You can decrease the time required to complete the activity by allowing students to supply an illustration of a trireme from their research rather than drawing their own. After completing their independent research, students might be interested to learn about the Greek navy’s modern reconstruction of a trireme:

• This article explains the significance of the trireme in Greek culture and gives a little background on Olympias, the trireme built by the Greek navy in the 1980s.
• This 2-minute video shows Olympias in action. (Note that this video is provided by one of the corporate sponsors of the project, and at 1:09 the video becomes commercial in nature—before this, it contains excellent information.)
• This 2-minute video from the Greek navy shows footage of the construction of Olympias as well as some relevant statistics.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

The Adventures of Ulysses is what we call a “hero’s journey” story. What other journey stories have you read, viewed on screen, or played through in a video game? Do you notice any common elements in these stories?

Teaching Suggestion: This question can be answered in writing, but a class discussion will allow students to hear about many more examples of the hero’s journey, and students may enjoy brainstorming together to discover common elements of these stories. Once they have reached some initial conclusions, if you wish to offer them more in-depth information on the hero’s journey archetype, this 5-minute TED-Ed video offers a solid introduction.