Question

Read the excerpt from The Odyssey.

In a smithy

one sees a white-hot axehead or an adze
plunged and wrung in a cold tub, screeching steam–
the way they make soft iron hale and hard—:
just so that eyeball hissed around the spike.

The use of the epic simile in this excerpt helps the reader understand

that the Cyclops only has one eye.
how brutal Odysseus and his men are.
the size of the wooden spear.
how hot the spear actually is.

Answer 1

D, The similie describes how hot the spear was with language that gives the reader a clear visual. The words, white-hot and sizzling tell the reader the tempurature of the weapon.

Answer 2

how hot the spear actually is.

Step-by-step explanation:

In this simile, Homer is comparing something familiar, which is the way that an iron arm is made by molding it and then inserting it into a cold tub of water, with something unfamiliar to the reader (this is the basic functioning of the Homeric simile), which is how they attacked the cyclops with a spike that was heated so that, when it entered the Cyclops’ eyeball, the spear hissed just like hot iron does as it enters a cold tub of water.