What role has weaving played in the story so far? There are many examples of women weaving - what is the purpose of this? Provide textual evidence (quotes).

So far the idea of a women weaving has been brought up in the book multiple time. It is always being done by a woman and it seems the women are weaving for many different reasons. One woman seemed to be doing it for the obvious reason of making clothing for her child. Another woman, Penelope, used it as a way to stall having to marry one of her suitors. Penelope said to the suitors when she was done with making her robe she would marry one of them. The suitors later found out she had been lying, " every day she would weave at the great loom, and every night she would unweave by torchlight. She fooled us for three years with her craft." That is how Penelope used weaving to avoid getting married.

The proem is the very first part of the Odyssey. It begins with "Speak Memory -" and ends with "And tell the tale once more in our time." The proem sets up many of the major topics/themes of the Odyssey. What do you think you might be able to tell about the topics/themes of the Odyssey just by reading the proem? Use evidence from the proem to support your claims.

The proem at the beginning of the Odyssey is explaining what happened to Odysseus in very little detail. It is like giving a head start into what the book will talk about. The topic within the proem and throughout other parts of the book that stuck out to me the most is the kind of person Odysseus was and how people viewed him. Farther into the book it talked about how important Odysseus was to the people in Ithica and seemed to portray him as a good person. The proem also discusses the kind of person Odysseus was. The proem says, "As he struggles to survive and bring his men home but could not save them, hard as he tried." That part of the poem shows how much Odysseus cared about his men and makes it clear Odysseus was a fighter and unwilling to give up on himself or his men. The proem starts the book off by giving clues into the topic of what kind of person Odysseus was and some of the things he went through.

Final thoughts on Frederick Douglass

The book, "Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass," was an autobiography about Fredrick's life as a slave and his journey to freedom. My favorite part of the book was when he said, “Whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to think of plans to gain my freedom,”(Douglass 58). I wondered why improving your conditions make your urge to escape stronger. Why would being treated better by people make you want to get away from them? Then I realized, the more freedom he was able to have to more freedom he wanted. In my opinion, that is a natural human response. He was deprived of human rights for most of his life and the more he found out what life should be like for him the more his was willing to fight for it.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Dover Publications Inc, 1995