The Odyssey Figurative Language

"Neither reply nor pity came from him,

but in one stride he clutched at my companions

and caught two in his hands like squirming puppies

to beat their brains out, spattering the floor."

• Epic Simile

• Personification

• Metaphor

• Alliteration

"When the young Dawn with fingertips of rose

lit up the world, the Cyclops built a fire

and milked his handsome ewes, all in due order."

• epithet

• personification

• situational irony

• alter ego

"The mammoth Polyphemus roared in answer:

'Nohbdy, Nhbdy's tricked me. Nohbdy's ruined me!'"

• Dramatic Irony

• Epithet

• Verbal Irony

• Metaphor

"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."

• Imagery

• Epic Simile

• Allusion

• Irony

"You never linger so,

but graze before them all, and go afar

to crop sweet grass, and take your stately way

leading along the streams, until at evening

you run to be the first one in the fold."

• Imagery

• Personification

• Simile

• Metaphor

"Last of them all my ram, the leader, came

weighted by wool and me with my meditations.

...

'Nohbdy will not get out alive, I swear.

Oh, had you brain and voice to tell

where he may be now, dodging my fury!

Bashed by his hand and based on this rock wall

his brains would strew the floor, and I should have

rest from the outrage Nohbdy worked upon me.'"

• Situational Irony

• Verbal Irony

• Imagery

• Epithet

"He led the way, and Pallas Athena followed into the lofty hall."

• Epithet

• Imagery

• Personification

• Alliteration

"strategist Odysseus"

"Pallas Athena"

• Irony

• Imagery

• Alter Ego

• Allusion

"A deep wood grew outside, with summer leaves

of alder and black poplar, pungent cypress.

Ornate birds here rested their stretched wings--

horned owls, falcons, cormorants--long-tongued

beachcombing birds, and followers of the sea."

• Allusion

• Epic simile

• Imagery

• Metaphor

"Maidenhood must end!

Have not the noblest born Phaecians

paid court to thee, whose birth none can excel?

Go beg thy sovereign father, even at dawn,

to have the mule cart and the mules brought round

to take thy body-linen, gowns, and mantles"

• Allusion

• Rhetorical Question

• Alliteration

• Imagery