Commonlit “Cheat Sheet” Quarter 4 (ENG I)

REMEMBER- These are to be used as a GUIDE, NOT something to copy! Changing a few words is STILL
PLAGIARISM. Use this to help you understand the question, and how to answer, NOT to copy! If you copy,
you will face all the consequences of academic dishonesty that have been in place since the beginning of the
year! If you copy your answers from ANY source, including any found online, you WILL face the
consequences!!!

1. Athena and Poseidon’s Contest for Athens (Due April 10th)

5. How are the details about Poseidon and Athena’s characters important to the development of the
myth’s theme? Cite evidence from the text in your answer.

Students should contrast the characterization of Athena, as the goddess of wisdom and full of
cleverness, against Poseidon, the god of the sea who is mighty and temperamental, and recognize that
Athena’s cleverness is more valuable than Poseidon's fury and flair for the dramatic. Athena is
characterized as having a “typical, wise approach” to problems, while Poseidon is depicted as much
more brash (Paragraph 4). For example, when he presents his gift to Athens, he is said to have “lifted
his massive trident… and struck the earth with it” (Paragraph 5). When he does not win the city, he
reacts violently and without foresight: “in a wild fury” he decided to “[drown] Attika under his salty sea”
(Paragraph 7). Poseidon makes a spectacle of his gift, while Athena is “far less dramatic,” proving that
showmanship is not the most important factor for this story (Paragraph 6). Athena’s gift is the most
“useful” — in fact it has three uses: food, oil, and wood (Paragraph 6). Poseidon’s gift is powerful but is
not useful to the Athenians. Students may conclude that usefulness is regarded highly among Athenian
values. This contributes to the theme that wisdom and useful gifts are more valuable than sheer power
or flashy displays.

2. Orpheus and Eurydice (Due April 24th)

5. Explain how the reactions of “the bloodless ghouls” to Orpheus’s song in paragraph 3 are important
to the overall theme of the story. Cite evidence from the story in your response.

Students should discuss how the various mythological characters' strong reactions to Orpheus' song
reinforce the theme that his love and grief can be as powerful, if not more powerful, than death. Ovid
shows this by describing characters that have been banished to a special area of Hades reserved for
punishment. The characters are so shocked and saddened by Orpheus’ song that they pause in their
torturous activities. Tantalus, a king constantly pursuing food and water just out of reach, stops
pursuing water when he hears Orpheus’s song (Paragraph 3). The other characters have similar
reactions when they hear the song. In fact, the song is so powerful that “for the first and only time the
hard cheeks of the fierce Eumenides were wet with tears” (Paragraph 3). These reactions reinforce the
sorrow and power of Orpheus’s song about Eurydice.

3. Arachne (Due May 8th)

5. How does the author foreshadow Arachne’s fate through her characterization?

Students should discuss how Arachne’s fate is foreshadowed by her skill as a weaver. Arachne
possesses a talent for spinning thread, similarly to how a spider spins a web. For instance, the narrator
describes Arachne’s weaving as “quick and graceful, and her fingers, roughened as they were, went so
 fast that it was hard to follow their flickering movements” (Paragraph 1). At the end of the story, Athena
tells Arachne, “Live on and spin, both you and your descendants,” confirming that Arachne’s ability to
weave was hinting at her fate to become a spider all along. (Students might also note that Arachne’s
name resembles the modern English word “arachnid.”) Through these details, the author foreshadows
the unfortunate conclusion of Arachne’s story from the very beginning of the text.

4. The Story of Prometheus and Pandora's Box (Due May 22nd)

5. How does the language and word choice in Paragraph 2 contribute to the tone of this myth?

Students should notice the use of phrases like “after a while” to describe the future or “making things
ready” as a simple and somewhat vague way to characterize forethought. These simple phrases mimic
everyday conversation more than the heightened register of myth. This fits in with Baldwin’s decision to
say “Mighty Ones” instead of “gods” or “mountain top” instead of the traditional Mount Olympus. Instead
of edifying the reader or losing them in heightened and erudite poetry, Baldwin’s tone calls readers up
to listen to a casual tale. The description of Prometheus and Epimetheus’s abilities is also rather
casual. The structure of phrases like “to-morrow, or next week, or next year, or it may be in a hundred
years to come,” and “yesterday, or last year, or a hundred years ago,” where the amount is multiplied
along with the list help make Prometheus and his brother more relatable characters and less like
unfathomable titans since these structures make the ordinary act of thinking about tomorrow or last
year seem similar to the incredible ability of thinking about hundreds of years into the future or past.