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150 multiple-choice questions and 45 flashcards, written to the AP English Literature blueprint. Every question carries a full rationale.
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AP English Literature, Common Core ELA 9-12 reading literature, IB English A: Literature world canon
CoStudy's The Odyssey (Homer) bank holds 195 items. Every multiple-choice question carries a written rationale explaining why the correct answer is correct and why each distractor is tempting but wrong.
A sample of 12 multiple-choice questions from the bank, with the full rationale shown.
A 'Homeric simile' is best defined as:
Answer: C — An extended, elaborated simile that lingers over a vehicle drawn from nature or daily life
A) That is a brief simile. C) The vehicle (a lion stalking, a smith plunging an iron blade into water) is developed in its own right and then mapped back. C/D) Wrong.
How does Odysseus protect his crew from the Sirens?
Answer: B — Stuffs their ears with wax
A) He must pass them. B) Correct — crew plugs ears with beeswax; Odysseus alone is tied to the mast to hear the song without steering into the rocks. C/D) Not the text.
At the poem's end, Athena's intervention prevents:
Answer: D — A cycle of vengeance between Odysseus and the suitors' families
A) Not the danger. D) Correct — the suitors' kin take up arms; Athena commands peace, breaking the blood-feud cycle. B/C) Not at issue.
The great bow of Odysseus symbolizes:
Answer: A — The unity of strength, skill and rightful kingship — only its owner can string and aim it
B) Reductive. A) The bow concentrates the political-symbolic content of the contest: only the true king can wield it, and the act of stringing it is also the act of identification. C) Not useless. D) An heirloom from Iphitus to Odysseus.
Why does Circe advise Odysseus to steer closer to Scylla than to Charybdis?
Answer: A — Charybdis would swallow the whole ship; Scylla will only take six men
B) Scylla is unkillable in the poem. A) The choice is between certain partial loss and certain total loss; Odysseus chooses the lesser evil. C) Not in the text. D) Geography is irrelevant.
What plot do the suitors hatch in Book 4 once they learn of Telemachus's voyage?
Answer: C — To ambush Telemachus at sea and kill him on his return
A) Not threatened. C) Antinous proposes lying in wait between Ithaca and Samos to murder the prince, which raises the suitors' moral guilt to a level that justifies their later destruction. B) The palace is their feeding ground. D) Not the plan.
Most scholars date the Odyssey's composition to approximately:
Answer: C — Around the 8th or 7th century BCE
A) Closer to the events evoked, not the composition. C) The consensus places the monumental composition in the late 8th or early 7th century, after a long oral prehistory. B) Too late. D) Far too late.
How does Odysseus arrive on Ithaca in Book 13?
Answer: C — He is set down asleep on a beach by Phaeacian sailors, who leave his treasure beside him
A) He needs no swim. C) The Phaeacians ferry him in a single night, beach him while he sleeps, and place his gifts beside him, leaving him to wake disoriented. B) Athena meets him after he wakes. D) No theft.
When Odysseus's raft is destroyed off the coast of Phaeacia, who saves him with a magical veil?
Answer: C — The sea nymph Ino (Leucothea)
A) Athena calms the wind. B) Calypso is left behind. C) Ino, a transformed mortal now a sea goddess, gives him an immortal scarf that keeps him afloat. D) Circe has nothing to do with this rescue.
After the slaughter, the unfaithful maids are made to:
Answer: D — Clean the bloody hall, then be executed by hanging
A) They are not exiled. D) Telemachus orders them to scrub the gore, then strings them up together — a notoriously harsh moment that has shaped modern feminist reception, notably Atwood's Penelopiad. C/B) Wrong.
Which of the following is a half-right reading of the theme of cunning?
Answer: D — Cunning is celebrated, but it also generates the boast at the cave and the lies that complicate Odysseus's relationships
A) Partly true but ignores the cost. D) A fuller reading: metis works, and it also produces moral fallout. C) Not condemned overall. B) Penelope and Athena share it with Odysseus.
When Athena first appears to Telemachus on Ithaca, she takes the form of:
Answer: B — Mentes, a family friend and Taphian chieftain
A) That disguise is later used by Odysseus himself. B) Athena disguises herself as Mentes (and later as Mentor) to guide Telemachus without revealing her divinity. C) Eurycleia plays a different role. D) Phemius is a bard in the household, not a disguise of the goddess.
6 sample cards from the 45 in the bank.
Who is Antinous?
Ringleader of the suitors. The first one Odysseus shoots with the great bow.
What is Aeolus's gift?
A bag containing all the unfavorable winds. Odysseus's crew opens it near Ithaca thinking it's gold; storm blows them back.
Where is Odysseus's home?
Ithaca, a small Greek island in the Ionian Sea.
What happens at Helios's island (Thrinacia)?
Crew slaughters Helios's sacred cattle despite warnings. Zeus destroys the ship; only Odysseus survives.
Who is the protagonist?
Odysseus, King of Ithaca. Cunning ('polytropos' — of many turns), strategist behind the Trojan Horse.
What happens at the Lotus-Eaters?
Odysseus's men eat the lotus and lose all desire to return home. He drags them back to the ship.
These samples are a small slice. The full bank runs flashcards, multiple choice and timed mock exams with per-chapter progress tracking, on the web and in the iOS app.
The The Odyssey (Homer) bank holds 195 items: 150 multiple-choice questions, 45 flashcards. 18 of them are on this page to read free, with no signup.
Yes. Every multiple-choice item carries a written rationale that states the controlling principle behind the correct answer and then addresses each wrong option in turn — why it tempts and precisely where it fails. Knowing why the plausible answer was wrong is worth more than knowing which letter was right.
The samples on this page are free to read in full, rationales included, with no account. The complete 195-item bank, the timed mock exams and per-chapter progress tracking are part of CoStudy on the web and in the iOS app.
Last reviewed 2026-08-22. Banks are written against the certifying body's published exam outline and re-checked when that outline changes — exams get renumbered, retired and reweighted, and a bank written to a superseded outline teaches the wrong proportions. Figures that are re-indexed annually are deliberately not asserted as rules; the questions test the governing principle instead.