Writing Prompts from Classic Writers - "The Odyssey"

            In The Odyssey, I didn’t find as many stand-out prompts as I did in the Epic of Gilgamesh, but that’s probably because The Odyssey is much better known and has already been highly influential—segments of the story have become part of the Western heritage, like pretending to be “Noman,” avoiding the seductive call of the Sirens, fighting the temptation to become a Lotus-Eater, having to decide between Scylla and Charybdis, and falling for Circe who turns men into swine—all these have been used over and over. But some lines or scenes still stood out that could be used as prompts for situations, like: 

• Devise a story or scenario for: 

                        “she bound on her feet

The beautiful sandals, golden, immortal,

That carry her over landscape and seascape

On a puff of wind.”

• Create a character for the “Daughter of . . . the Old Man of the Sea”

• What situation and person could produce these lines:

                                    “He will try everything,

            And turn into everything that moves on the earth,

            And into water also, and a burning flame.

            Just hang on and grip him all the more tightly.”

• Use the following to produce a story:

            “Shedding salt tears in the halls of Calypso”

• This one is haunting:

            “the phantom slipped through the keyhole and became a sigh in the air.”

• Imagine a background for this:

            “the cry of the spirit women who hold the high peaks”

• An interesting setting:

            “a floating island surrounded by a wall of indestructible bronze set on sheer stone”

• Another setting:

            “For night and day make one twilight there”

• What would lead to this situation:

            “The other ghosts crowded around in sorrow”

• Or this:

            “Most men die only once, but you twice.” 

• And this last one, so simple, is one of my favorites:

            “The night is young—and magical.”

• Finally, just in case you’re thinking of The Odyssey as being much too “classic” for modern tastes, I give you the gory and well-detailed description of puncturing the Cyclops’ single eye, with a stake that’s been heated and sharpened in a fire.  (Horror writers, take note of the great use of detail and simile):

My men lifted up the olivewood stake

And drove the sharp point right into his eye,

While I, putting my weight behind it, spun it around

The way a man bores a ship’s beam with a drill,

Leaning down on it while other men beneath him

Keep it spinning and spinning with a leather strap.

That’s how we twirled the fiery-pointed stake

In the Cyclops’ eye. The blood formed a whirlpool

Around its searing tip. His lids and brow

Were all singed by the heat from the burning eyeball

And its roots crackled in the fire and hissed

Like an axe-head or adze a smith dips into water

When he wants to temper the iron—that’s how his eye

Sizzled and hissed around the olivewood stake. 

He screamed, and the rock walls rang with his voice. 

Ugh! 

All quotes are from the Stanley Lombardo translation, and were taken from: 

The Norton Anthology of  Western Literature, 9^th ed., vol. 1.