Question

Identify an example of an epic simile in the Odyssey and explain how it is different from a typical simile

Answer 1

An epic/homeric simile is a simile that exceeds several lines and increase the heroic stature of the main character using metaphors and personification.

"I drove my weight on it from above and bored it home like a shipwright bores his beam with a shipwright's drill that men below, whipping the strap back and forth, whirl and the drill keeps twisting, never stopping --So we seized our stake with it fiery tip and bored it round and round in the giant's eye."-The Odyssey

Answer 2

In Book 13 of the Odyssey, Homer uses an epic simile to compare Ulysses to a farmer who has been toiling in the fields all day and is eagerly looking forward to sundown so he can retire home and rest. After two decades away from Ithaca, Ulysses, like a weary farmer at the end of the day, just wants his journey and misadventures to end peacefully so he can reunite with his wife and son:

All, but Ulysses, heard with fix’d delight;

He sate, and eyed the sun, and wish’d the night;

Slow seem’d the sun to move, the hours to roll,

His native home deep-imaged in his soul.

As the tired ploughman, spent with stubborn toil,

Whose oxen long have torn the furrow’d soil,

Sees with delight the sun’s declining ray,

When home with feeble knees he bends his way

To late repast (the day’s hard labour done);

So to Ulysses welcome set the sun;

In Book 23 of the Odyssey, Homer uses another epic simile to demonstrate how happy Ulysses is when he finally reunites with his wife after over a decade away at war and at sea.

Touch’d to the soul, the king with rapture hears,

Hangs round her neck, and speaks his joy in tears.

As to the shipwreck’d mariner, the shores

Delightful rise, when angry Neptune roars:

Then, when the surge in thunder mounts the sky,

And gulf’d in crowds at once the sailors die;

If one, more happy, while the tempest raves,

Outlives the tumult of conflicting waves,

All pale, with ooze deform’d, he views the strand,

And plunging forth with transport grasps the land:

Homer draws a parallel between Ulysses's excitement to finally be home with his family and a "shipwreck’d mariner" who, after losing his crew and his ship in a storm at sea, sights land for the first time. The epic simile used here is different from the typical simile in terms of length. The comparison between Ulysses and the mariner is quite extensive as it’s used across several lines. In addition, Ulysses has lived the experience of the shipwrecked mariner himself many times in his journey home. He embodies both the image used for the simile as well as the joyous husband reunited at long last with his valiant wife.