write a thesis that a reasonable reader could dispute, build topic sentences that advance it rather than summarize plot, and embed a quotation inside my own sentence with an MLA citation.
Workbook: page 12 of your Unit 1 Student Workbook (this is the Stage 1 organizer: draft it here, then submit it online). Draft on paper first; anything scored is submitted online in this lesson.
Instruction
This lesson produces Stage 1 of the unit’s key assignment. By the end of it you will have a thesis, four pieces of evidence, and a plan — not a finished essay, and deliberately so.
A thesis is a claim someone could argue with. That is the whole test. Apply it ruthlessly:
- The Odyssey is about a hero’s journey home. Nobody disputes this. It is a summary.
- Odysseus is a complex character with both good and bad traits. Nobody disputes this either. It is a description, and it is true of almost every character in literature.
- Homer withholds Odysseus for four books so that the reader’s desire for his return is established as a political need before it can become personal admiration — which is why his cruelty in Book 22 does not cost him the reader’s sympathy. Now we have an argument. A reasonable person could read Book 22 and disagree.
Notice what the third example has that the first two lack: it names a choice the author made and asserts an effect. That is the grammar of a literary thesis — because the author does X, the reader experiences Y. Keep the author in the sentence. “Odysseus is proud” is about a man who does not exist. “Homer stages Odysseus’s pride at the moment of escape” is about a poem, and a poem is a thing you can produce evidence about.
A topic sentence advances the claim; it does not report the plot. Compare: In Book 9, Odysseus and his men enter the Cyclops’s cave. That is a plot summary and it tells your reader nothing about why the paragraph exists. Now: The escape from the cave is engineered entirely through concealed identity, which makes the shout that follows a deliberate reversal rather than an accident. The second sentence tells the reader what the paragraph will prove.
Embedding a quotation means the quoted words work as part of your own grammar. Three levels, worst to best:
- Dropped quotation. “Odysseus is proud. ‘Say it was the valiant warrior Ulysses.’ This shows his pride.” The quotation sits in the paragraph with no sentence around it. Avoid entirely.
- Signal phrase. As Odysseus shouts from the ship, “say it was the valiant warrior Ulysses, son of Laertes” (Butler, bk. 9). Acceptable.
- Woven. Odysseus does not merely reveal his name; he supplies the epithet himself, insisting the Cyclops remember him as “the valiant warrior Ulysses” (Butler, bk. 9) — the phrasing of a man dictating his own reputation. This is what proficient looks like.
MLA mechanics for this unit. Cite a translated verse epic by book: (Butler, bk. 9). Punctuation goes outside the parenthesis. Your Works Cited entry names the translator, because the words you are quoting are the translator’s words.
One more thing, and it is the point of a recursive workshop. Your thesis is a hypothesis right now. If, while gathering evidence, you find a passage that does not fit, that is not a problem to hide — it is the most useful thing that will happen to you today. Change the thesis to the one the evidence supports.
📖 Before this lesson, read: The Odyssey, Books 13-16
The reading opens over the lesson; close it to come back to exactly where you were.
Reading: Mentor paragraph, student model and revision: thesis, topic sentence and the embedded quotation
Homer, The Odyssey, tr. Samuel Butler (1900), Project Gutenberg 1727 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1727); all retrieved 26 Sept. 2026 · SLS original; quoted passages are public domain (Butler, The Odyssey, 1900)
Study the mentor paragraph and the model before you draft your Stage 1 organizer.
Edition. Mentor paragraph: Samuel Butler, preface to his own translation, The Odyssey (1900), Project Gutenberg #1727, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1727, retrieved 2026-09-26. Quotation bank: the same translation. The student model, the revision and the criteria are SLS original.
1. A mentor paragraph: how a critic builds a claim
Butler is arguing about how the poem is put together. Read the paragraph for its moves, not for its conclusion. His theory of who wrote the poem, and when, is his own and is not the accepted view. The paragraph is useful because it shows a thesis that names a choice and its effect.
Briefly, the “Odyssey” consists of two distinct poems: (1) The Return of Ulysses, which alone the Muse is asked to sing in the opening lines of the poem. This poem includes the Phaeacian episode, and the account of Ulysses’ adventures as told by himself in Books ix.-xii. It consists of lines 1-79 (roughly) of Book i., of line 28 of Book v., and thence without intermission to the middle of line 187 of Book xiii., at which point the original scheme was abandoned.
(2) The story of Penelope and the suitors, with the episode of Telemachus’ voyage to Pylos. This poem begins with line 80 (roughly) of Book i., is continued to the end of Book iv., and not resumed till Ulysses wakes in the middle of line 187, Book xiii., from whence it continues to the end of Book xxiv.
In “The Authoress of the Odyssey”, I wrote:
the introduction of lines xi., 115-137 and of line ix., 535, with the writing a new council of the gods at the beginning of Book v., to take the place of the one that was removed to Book i., 1-79, were the only things that were done to give even a semblance of unity to the old scheme and the new, and to conceal the fact that the Muse, after being asked to sing of one subject, spend two-thirds of her time in singing a very different one, with a climax for which no-one has asked her. For roughly the Return occupies eight Books, and Penelope and the Suitors sixteen.
Moves to mark. (1) Claim: the poem “consists of two distinct poems.” (2) Evidence located by book and line: he says where each poem starts and stops. (3) Effect: the Muse is asked to sing “of one subject” and spends most of the poem on another. Notice that the claim is about what the author did, not about what the hero is like. That is the grammar the lesson teaches: because the author does X, the reader experiences Y.
2. Student model: thesis, topic sentence and embedded quotation (SLS original)
Written for this lesson; not a real student’s work. It argues a different claim from the unit essay so that you can borrow the moves, not the argument.
Thesis. Homer places Odysseus’s speech against boasting over the dead in Book 22 after the shout that made Polyphemus’s curse possible in Book 9, so the poem presents his restraint as something learned at great cost.
Topic sentence. When Odysseus stops Euryclea from crying out in triumph, the poem lets him say aloud the rule he broke in Book 9.
Body paragraph. When Euryclea sees the bodies and begins “to cry out for joy,” Ulysses checks her: it is, he says, “an unholy thing to vaunt over dead men” (Butler, bk. 22). The words are strict, and they belong to the man who, in Book 9, shouted his own name at a blinded giant while his crew begged him to be quiet. Homer does not comment on the change. He puts the rule in the mouth of the one character who has paid for ignoring it.
3. A before-and-after revision (SLS original)
| Move | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Topic sentence | In Book 22, Odysseus kills the suitors and then talks to Euryclea. | Homer has Odysseus rebuke Euryclea’s rejoicing only after the killing is finished, which makes his restraint look less like a virtue he always had than a lesson the poem has taught him. |
| Quotation | Odysseus says something to Euryclea. “It is an unholy thing to vaunt over dead men.” This shows he has changed. | When Euryclea begins to cry out for joy, Ulysses stops her: it is, he says, “an unholy thing to vaunt over dead men” (Butler, bk. 22). |
What changed. The first topic sentence reports plot; the second names a choice Homer made (“only after the killing is finished”) and the effect on the reader. In the first quotation the words stand alone and the writer’s sentence does none of the work; in the second, the quoted words finish the writer’s own sentence and the citation gives book and translator.
4. A quotation bank for your Stage 1 organizer
You may use these or quotations of your own from the poem. Cite each as (Butler, bk. N). Every one is copied from Butler’s translation. Which quotations complicate your thesis depends on your thesis, so read them all.
Book 1, the invocation.
but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly
Book 9, the shout.
‘Cyclops, if any one asks you who it was that put your eye out and spoiled your beauty, say it was the valiant warrior Ulysses, son of Laertes, who lives in Ithaca.’
Book 13, Minerva to Ulysses.
Dare devil that you are, full of guile, unwearying in deceit, can you not drop your tricks and your instinctive falsehood, even now that you are in your own country again?
Book 22, Ulysses to Euryclea.
“Old woman,” said he, “rejoice in silence; restrain yourself, and do not make any noise about it; it is an unholy thing to vaunt over dead men.
Book 22, the maids.
So saying he made a ship’s cable fast to one of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of the domed room, and secured it all around the building, at a good height, lest any of the women’s feet should touch the ground; and as thrushes or doves beat against a net that has been set for them in a thicket just as they were getting to their nest, and a terrible fate awaits them, even so did the women have to put their heads in nooses one after the other and die most miserably.
5. Criteria for Stage 1 (what your organizer will be scored on)
- Thesis. One sentence. A reasonable reader could disagree. It names a choice Homer made and asserts an effect. It is about the poem, not only about the man.
- Evidence. Four quotations, each with a book citation and a one-sentence note on what it proves. The quotation is exact.
- The complicating quotation. One passage that cuts against your thesis, with a note on how you will handle it.
- Topic sentences. Four. Each advances the claim. None begins “In Book.” A test: could this sentence be true of the book without being about your argument? If so, it is a summary.
- Embedded quotation. Quoted words complete your own sentence; the citation follows.
Formative check
Work through these before moving on. They are not graded — they tell you, and your teacher, whether the standard below has landed yet.
Which of these is a workable thesis for the unit essay?
If the evidence you gather contradicts the thesis you started with, the right move is to find different evidence.
Odysseus insists the Cyclops remember him as the “valiant warrior Ulysses” Butler, bk. 9 , phrasing that belongs to a man dictating his own reputation.
Submit your Stage 1 organizer here: (1) your thesis, in one sentence, naming a choice Homer made and the effect it has; (2) four quotations with book citations, each with a one-sentence note on what it proves; (3) one quotation that complicates your thesis, with a note on how you plan to handle it; (4) your four topic sentences, none of which may begin with “In Book”.
How confident are you that you can tell the difference between a thesis and a summary, and fix a summary by naming an authorial choice and its effect?
The Odyssey, Books 13-16
The Odyssey, Books 13-16 so far Bridge summary — not the primary text
A recap of what you have already read, written for this course, so the reading check below does not require re-opening every earlier popover.
Poseidon’s anger follows Odysseus home one last time, turning the Phaeacian ship to stone, but Athena disguises him as a beggar the moment he lands and briefs him on the suitors overrunning his house (Book 13). Still disguised, he is sheltered by the loyal swineherd Eumaeus, who does not know he is talking to his own master (Book 14). Athena steers Telemachus home past the suitors’ ambush and to the same hut (Book 15), where she restores Odysseus’s true form and father and son recognize each other and begin plotting together (Book 16).