Examples Of Similes In The Iliad

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In book VIII of The Iliad, the death of a Trojan prince is juxtaposed to “a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends, / drooping its head to one side, weighed down / by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower” (VIII. 349-351). Just as the prince loses his glory, as well as his life, the poppy loses its beauty and life as it is weakened by a spring shower. Throughout the battle scenes in The Iliad, Homer compares great warriors to plants and natural forces using similes. The conventional way scholars interpret the use of these similes is to show that violence exists everywhere in the world (Stanley). However, I will argue that these similes of nature show glory’s existence in nature. While many warriors do achieve glory during war, their …show more content…

As seen in The Iliad, war brings the chance for men to gain glory, but they are never able to fully gain true glory. The warriors will never obtain the same amount of glory that nature and natural forces have. While the men’s glory is lost, nature will always be present, and thus, forever will have glory. But, while a warrior can no longer gain glory in battle in the modern world, nature still has retained its glory and force throughout history. An example of this from the poem is when Hector is first able to enter the Argive encampment, and his actions are compared to “a heavy surf roars in against the rip / at a river’s mouth, swelled with rains from Zeus, / and on either side the jutting headlands bellow back / at the booming sea with matching thunder” (XVII. 299-302). In this moment, he has great glory: he and his Trojan men are close to winning the ongoing battle since they were able to get into the Argive camp. Paralleled to this, a powerful wave is described slamming into a cliff, which reflects the force back into the ocean. While in that moment, Hector is full of glory, very soon his death brings a loss of glory for him. Unlike the wave, Hector’s glory and force cannot live forever. In the simile, waves will continue to slam into that cliff, and so the glory of the ocean and its waves will never die. This means that only the wave has the true glory between the two: a glory that can withstand hundreds of years and be understood by anyone during that time. True glory cannot be achieved by any mortal being. As a result, only plants, such as trees that can live hundreds of years, and natural forces, like wind, can hold the true glory all the warriors in The Iliad strive

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