The Odyssey Questions Book 22: How do the remaining suitors try to appease Odysseus?

Book 22

1. As logic dictates, Antinous is the first to die. How do the remaining suitors try to appease Odysseus? Why, in view of the Odyssey’s task as we have discussed it in class, would it be inappropriate for Odysseus to accept their arguments or pleas?
2. At what points in the struggle is Athena active? How much does she help Odysseus, and how much credit is mainly his?
3. Why might it be significant, in light of the Odyssey’s task as we have discussed it in class, that around line 400 Odysseus, in Fagles’ translation, refers to the work that remains to be done in the book as “household chores”?
4. How do Odysseus and Telemachus deal with Melanthius the goatherd and the women who sported with the suitors? Consider the intensity of the violence throughout this book – do you find it unsettling or “over the top”? Why or why not? Does the epic narrator take up an attitude towards the violence?