The Odyssey

Figurative Language

Terms and Conventions Poetics Figurative Language Structure Who's who Places Themes Overview

Image source: http://www.beloit.edu/~classics/main/courses/classics100/museum2/art_museum2.html

Note: This site is designed to be used with Robert Fagles' translation of the Odyssey, published by Penguin USA. It was prepared for a 9th grade English class.

Figurative Language

Homer loves similes (a comparison between two seemingly unlike things using "like" or "as"). They can be found everywhere in the Odyssey. Homer often expands upon a simile, putting it into motion so to speak; and these expanded similes are called Homeric or epic similes.

Weak as the doe that beds down her fawns
in a mighty lion's den - her newborn sucklings -
then trails off to the mountain spurs and grassy bends
to graze her fill, but back the lion comes to his own lair
and the master deals both fawns a ghastly, bloody death,
just what Odysseus will deal that mob - ghastly death.

As a man will bury his glowing brand in black ashes,
off on a lonely farmstead, no neighbors near,
to keep a spark alive, so great Odysseus buried
himself in leaves and Athena showered sleep
upon his eyes.

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...
its crackling roots blazed
and hissed -
as a blacksmith plunges a glowing ax or adze
in an ice-cold bath and the metal screeches steam
and its temper hardens - that's the iron's strength -
so the eye of Cyclops sizzled round that stake.

So they mocked, but Odysseus, mastermind in action,
once he'd handled the great bow and scanned every inch,
then, like an expert singer skilled at lyre and song--
who strains a string to a new peg with ease,
making the pliant sheep-gut fast at either end--
so with his virtuoso ease Odysseus strung his mighty bow.
Quickly his right hand plucked the string to test its pitch
and under his touch it sang out clear and sharp as a swallow's cry.

Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel
when they catch sight of land - Poseidon has struck
their well-rigged ship on the open sea with gale winds,
and crushing walls of waves, and only a few escape, swimming,
struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore,
their bodies crusted with salt, but buoyed up with joy
as they plant their feet on solid ground again,
spared a deadly fate. So joyous now to her
the sight of her husband vivid in her gaze.

Her mind in torment, wheeling like some lion at bay,
dreading the gangs of hunters closing their cunning ring
around him for the finish. (This is Penelope being hounded by the suitors.)

Other devices

Personification occurs in almost every book when "Dawn" arises with her "rose-red fingers". As the gods have distinctly human characteristics, they display a non-linguistic personification even amongst themselves. They also appear disguised as people, and the Mentor we know is always the "personification of Athena. Other things are frequently personified: "Sleep" looses "Odysseus' limbs, slipping the toils of anguish from his mind"; "East and South Winds clashed, and the raging West and North/sprung from the heavens, roiled heaving breakers up."

Metaphors are less striking in the Odyssey than similes. They are frequently embedded in verbs: "Nine years we wove a web of disaster"; "that made the rage of the monster boil over"; "his mind churning with thoughts of bloody work"; "Terror blanched their faces" (note the personification of terror). Odysseus is "fated to escape his noose of pain," and when he finds himself near the land of the Laestrygonians, he places his ship "well clear of the harbors jaws."

Symbols are also associated with the gods. Eagles, usually swooping down, are often seen as manifestation of Zeus, but they are also portents that foreshadow Odysseus' return. As such they need interpreters gifted at reading signs (Halitherses, Theoclymenus, Helen, and even Odysseus, himself, when he interprets a dream of Penelope's). Many gods are associated with specific symbols: Zeus, the thunderbolt; Poseidon, the scepter; Apollo and Artemis, arrows; Athena the loom. The loom itself is associated with all the major female characters, Calypso, Circe, Helen and, most memorably, Penelope.

Odyssey Overview