In The Odyssey, Homer makes use of elaborate similes. This use of similes is frequent in epic poems. Homer uses similes help to maintain the audience's interest, because the technique captures the imagination. Similes are also used to explain things that the reader may not be able to grasp by connecting it to something that they have already seen. Similes are a means to bring our attention to something important or to hone in upon the reader's senses. The poem reveals scores of similes. I will attempt to study several similes in The Odyssey and how Homer has used them. .
The poem opens with Zeus discussing how self-indulgence and foolishness is the downfall of mankind. Specifically, he is referring to how Aigisthos and Agamemnon's wife murdered Agamemnon. At this, Athena pleads with her father, Zeus, to allow Odysseus to reach home again. Suitors are harassing Odysseus" wife Penelope. The suitors assume that Odysseus is dead and they vie for Penelope's hand in marriage. In conversation with her father, Zeus, Athena seeks permission to visit Ithaka, Odysseus" island, to boost Telemakhos" courage. Telemakhos is Odysseus" son. Athena feels that she must alert Telemakhos to the dangerous suitors. Athena proclaims, "He must warn off that wolf pack of the suitors / who prey upon his flocks and dusky cattle." (1.117-118). This is the first of many similes used in The Odyssey that compares certain characters to animals. .
Throughout the poem, the suitors are referred to as wolves. When Penelope learns from Medon, the crier, of the suitors" plan to intercept Telemakhos at sea and murder him she also refers to them as wolves. She cries, "Each day you crowd this house like wolves / to eat away my brave son's patrimony." (4.735-736). In contrast, the suitors are also compared to fawns. An angry Menelaos expresses to Telemakhos his thoughts on the suitors: .
"Intolerable - that soft men, as those are,.
The Iliad and the Odyssey will prove to be literature that shapes a nation. ... He used similes to bring dramatic events down to earth. ... The Odyssey is a true love story. The Odyssey celebrates the love of a husband and wife. ... Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey in the eighth century B.C. ...
The Odyssey and the Iliad are two of Homer's most famous works. ... The audience of the Odyssey would have known this context. ... The Odyssey is one of the most beloved epics of all time. ... Along those same lines, Homer's works are the reason for the phrase "Homeric similes", also called "heroic similes". Such similes compare heroic or epic-type events to those of the everyman's experiences. ...
There are many themes and main ideas within Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey that model these issues of society. ... He also uses a simile to compare Antanoos' nostrils to pipes. ... In the Fitzgerald translation of The Odyssey, figurative language devices such as death imagery, hyperboles, and frantic image patterns effectively demonstrate the violence and bloodshed in Odysseus' life. ... The utilization of literary devices enhances this passage's ability to be more realistic and to help emphasize the central focus of The Odyssey. ...
Homer uses a double simile in lines 9.326-330 to provide the gory details of how the Cyclops kills and eats the men. In one simile he compares the men and their defenseless nature and the ease in which he kills them to pups. ... In another simile, the Cyclops is compared to a mountain lion when devouring his meal of human flesh. The images created by these similes emphasize the destructive and ferocious nature of the Cyclops. ... The Odyssey. ...
Edwards also uses several metaphors and similes such as "The bow of God's wrath is bent" and "The wrath of God is like great waters that are damned for the present." ... He also alludes to different books like The Odyssey and the Bible. ... He expressed his opinion by using metaphors, similes, and harsh, descriptive language. ...
The most dominant epic influence upon Virgil was Homer, the Greek author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. ... Other epic conventions Virgil uses in the Aeneid include divine intervention, the arming of a hero, extraordinary deeds of battle, a journey that includes a descent to the underworld, "in media res", the active intervention of gods and supernatural beings, and the use of similes. A simile is a poetic comparison of and individual, thing or event to something else of greater familiarity to an audience in order to clarify its meaning or significance. ... The simile is the most prevalent fo...
In historical times, epics weren't epics unless they were written as long narrative poems; nowadays, however, considering the majority of poets these days don't consider themselves constrained by the even the most elementary rules of grammar, epics are no longer written as Homer wrote the Odyssey. ... Sayuri was taught to use her own type of epic similes and epithets in her schooling in Kyoto. ... Surely, Sayuri's similes and metaphors are comparable to Homeric similes. ...
Through his writing, he illustrates the landscape, the sea and we are led into the stories of the Odyssey. ... In this chapter, de Bernieres introduces the beginning of Pelagia's voyage, the start of her Odyssey. ... His use of rhetorical repetition, vocabulary and similes has strong implications to Homeric language and the Odyssey. ...
Book of Job vs Aristotle's Poetics Aristotle was, arguably, the greatest single thinker that has ever walked the earth. His thoughts and writings covered all aspects of life. So important were his works that to not know them was, until not too long ago, considered uncivilized. He composed a set o...
