1) Helen of Sparta and the devastating power of beauty For millennia the power of beauty, mostly personified by women but, in the end, by anyone and anything that would be held beautiful in the eyes of the beholder, has given us a sense of our own frailty (and madness) before it. We, the beholders, have been threatened, seized, raptured, and ravaged by the hold of beauty, engaging with it in an unequal rapport, and anytime we could, we have defended ourselves from its fierceness. Mostly, however, we have done so by forcefully taking away from the beautiful the very power that we had given to them in the first place, when, succumbing to its Power, didn’t get us Beauty and neither Power. (Consider, for example, the act of conquering something because it is beautiful. Does it remain beautiful once it is conquered? Isn’t the act of conquering in itself a belittling act, diminishing the value of the conquered automatically? -Take for example a tiger who is captured and kept in captivity).  The gift/curse Helen’s beauty is powerful enough “to launch a thousand ships” but is she free not to? In other words, she is able, but is she willing? What can she do with her power? What should she do?  And what does she do instead or then? How does she use it?  What decisions does she make? Why can she make them? Why can she not make them? Another query could be: Is Helen free to decline the power given to her? And if so, how?  If the answer is no, how can an object of reverence, desire, and obsession protect itself from being exploited? From losing its (her/his) freedom to say no? And if she/he/it can’t say no, what can happen? What will happen? What might happen? What ought to happen?  The Helen in our times, who is she/he? What is it? And how should/would she use that power? The Helen in your life. Elaborate. 2) The Heroes of Troy Answer two of these three following questions. 1) Compare the Achilles of Book I with the Achilles of Book XXIV in The Iliad. How do you think he has changed? Show your reason in your presentation. 2)Greed, hubris, conquest, manhood, kleos, love, loyalty. Where do we find them in the texts studied? (The Iliad, the Odyssey, the  tragedies, the poetry) Choose one or more examples, and again, explain your reasons, bring out the quotes, reason them in your oral presentation. 3)Working with characters. Speak about no more than two characters taken from any of the texts studied (The Iliad, The Odyssey, or ay of the characters from the tragedies): 1) Penelope: her character, her wits, her choices. 2) Eumaeus: his character, his meaning, his moral values 3) Circe: the great witch, the teacher, the powerful sorceress, the "one who knows", the temptress. 4) Odysseus: The King, The Pirate, the Politician, the affabulatory Scoundrel, the 5) Player, the Adventurer, the Wise man, the…? 6) Tiresias, the seer. Meaning of the underworld in the "initiation to oneself" 7) The Lotus flower: war as a mean of for.

1. 1) Helen of Sparta and the devastating power of beauty
For millennia the power of beauty, mostly personified by
women but, in the end, by anyone and anything that would be
held beautiful in the eyes of the beholder, has given us a sense
of our own frailty (and madness) before it.
We, the beholders, have been threatened, seized, raptured, and
ravaged by the hold of beauty, engaging with it in an unequal
rapport, and anytime we could, we have defended ourselves
from its fierceness. Mostly, however, we have done so by
forcefully taking away from the beautiful the very power that
we had given to them in the first place, when, succumbing to its
Power, didn’t get us Beauty and neither Power.
(Consider, for example, the act of conquering something
because it is beautiful. Does it remain beautiful once it is
conquered? Isn’t the act of conquering in itself a belittling act,
diminishing the value of the conquered automatically? -Take for
example a tiger who is captured and kept in captivity).
The gift/curse Helen’s beauty is powerful enough “to launch a
thousand ships” but is she free not to?
In other words, she is able, but is she willing?
What can she do with her power? What should she do?
And what does she do instead or then? How does she use it?
What decisions does she make? Why can she make them? Why
can she not make them?

2. Another query could be: Is Helen free to decline the power
given to her? And if so, how?
If the answer is no, how can an object of reverence, desire, and
obsession protect itself from being exploited? From losing its
(her/his) freedom to say no?
And if she/he/it can’t say no, what can happen? What will
happen? What might happen? What ought to happen?
The Helen in our times, who is she/he? What is it? And how
should/would she use that power?
The Helen in your life.
Elaborate.
2) The Heroes of Troy
Answer two of these three following questions.
1) Compare the Achilles of Book I with the Achilles of Book
XXIV in The Iliad. How do you think he has changed? Show
your reason in your presentation.

3. 2)Greed, hubris, conquest, manhood, kleos, love, loyalty. Where
do we find them in the texts studied? (The Iliad, the Odyssey,
the tragedies, the poetry) Choose one or more examples, and
again, explain your reasons, bring out the quotes, reason them
in your oral presentation.
3)Working with characters. Speak about no more than two
characters taken from any of the texts studied (The Iliad, The
Odyssey, or ay of the characters from the tragedies):
1) Penelope: her character, her wits, her choices.
2) Eumaeus: his character, his meaning, his moral values
3) Circe: the great witch, the teacher, the powerful sorceress,
the "one who knows", the temptress.
4) Odysseus: The King, The Pirate, the Politician, the
affabulatory Scoundrel, the 5) Player, the Adventurer, the Wise
man, the…?
6) Tiresias, the seer. Meaning of the underworld in the
"initiation to oneself"
7) The Lotus flower: war as a mean of forgetting/loss of the
self, coping with the devastating effects of the war.
8) Calypso: Significance of love as forgetting/loss of self. Who
is Calypso, what does she represents? Who is she to Odysseus?
What is the metaphor behind?
Telemachus: The mighty Orphan, The Man in the making,
the…?

4. Hyppolitus, the rigid moralist
Antigone, the unrelenting keeper of the sacred order versus the
city's order
Oedipus, running away from himself
Remember that:
all creative projects, in any case, will have to be accompanied
by a one-page outline describing the project.
HOW TO EXECUTE THE FINAL
Again, it is either a presentation or a creative project.
(Remember that a one-page written outline/presentation of your
project and the mediums and/or works cited is expected to
accompany your project).
Possible mediums:
A presentation. You may talk to me in a video and make use of

5. any available medium you can think of, besides your voice: PP,
graphs, interviews, photographs, clips, slides, radio program,
you name it. You are presenting your ideas, your thought, your
reflections, your findings.
A piece of music (if you are a composer or a musician) written,
and/or played and recorded;
A comic strip;
A video;
A Photo album;
A cartoon;
A movie.
POSSIBLE THEMES/IDEAS FOR YOUR CREATIVE
ASSIGNMENTS
(Again, remember that of course you may use the assignments
above that I proposed for the written final).
Re-writing a book of the Iliad or the Odyssey (in rhyme, if you
wish, or simply with another ending- if you decide to speak
from Helen’s point of view refrain from falling into
romanticism, please, and silly love pictures. Think adult, think

6. 3000 years ago and delve into the relationships between the
characters. Also, whether you like Helen or you don’t, think of
her as the shrewd, intelligent woman that she was);
Revisiting any of the characters poetically or literarily (writing
a story with them. Please be logical and consequential. When
Helen tells us in Book 4 of the Odyssey that she met with
Odysseus in the middle of the night in a deserted hallway of the
Trojan palace, the dialogue was about intelligence not love,
beauty, or recrimination. Maybe, then, in your story Helen
might become a spy);
Writing a memory from the voice of Helen; If Helen speaks to
us about her daughter Hermione whom she left behind to follow
Paris Alexander, let it be consequential, and so on;
Retelling an episode from “The Iliad” or “The Odyssey” from
the point of view of one of the characters (one which we haven't
heard, say one of the women or one of the minor warriors);
Poems which depict either characters or scenes of your choices
from the books of either one of the Epic Works (say you want to
immortalize a moment that we were not told about);
Chronicles from the war (editorials, news, articles about the war
and Helen, as in a newspaper or magazine, or a blog style)
Or:

7. Change the prospective of something that we do know.
Example: in the Odyssey, when Odysseus goes in the
underworld Agamemnon retells in most moving words the
funeral of Achilles.
You could write the funeral of Helen after she is hung by
Polyxo (one of the versions of her death, research it) but
through the words and the feelings of anyone you wish (her
daughter, a servant, a messenger, people thousands of years
later, maybe you yourself who found out on CNN or from me
telling you here).
Or tell the truth about Odysseus’ death from somebody else’s
point of view –how they might have heard or why. (He was
killed accidentally by his son Telegonus, whom he had,
unbeknownst to him, by Circe, who -by the way- ends up
marrying Telemachus while Telegonus eventually will marry
Penelope – face it: these people would have a laugh at our lame
Hollywood plots). So that you would still tell the “truth” as we
know it but from the point of view of Menelaus, for example,
his good friend, who is devastated by it, or maybe, sinisterly
happy about it, if you convince us of it.
Another idea that you can shape in a hundred other ways: Take
any scene from one of the two books, the least significant, one
of the many descriptions that Homer makes of either nature or
animals or one of the similes, ANY PART IN THE TWO
BOOKS WHERE IT SEEMS THAT NOTHING BIG IS
HAPPENING and steal a most relevant and consequential story
of your making from it.
Case in point, the painting we discussed in class: “Girl with a
pearl earring”, by the 17thcentury Dutch painter Johannes

8. Vermeer:
http://prints.encore-editions.com/0/500/johannes-vermeer-girl-
with-a-pearl-earring.jpg (Links to an external site.)Links to an
external site.
and what writer Tracy Chevalier did with it. Again, the writer,
just from the image of a girl with an earring, wrote an entire
novel about that girl, how she came to own that earring, what
happened to her because of it; to the painter for giving it to her;
and to the painter’s marriage with his neurotic wife, and so on!
It’s brilliant that she could make up that whole compelling story
just from that image (you should watch the movie, starring
Scarlet Johansson).
There you go, I think I have been walking you enough up to the
edge, now pull the string, open your parachutes and jump.
Also, as you jump, jump alone or even in a group if you decide
to share your efforts with a class mate, but that’s it, no stealing
other’s people parachutes: PLAGIARISM IS AGAINST THE
RULES AND THE LAW OF OUR SCHOOL and I will leave
you cold, flat and flunked wherever I find you. No pity.