“You know how precious a father’s life is
To children who have seen him through a long disease,
Gripped by a malevolent spirit and melting away,
But then released from suffering in a spasm of joy.
The land and woods were that welcome a sight
To Odysseus…”
The continuity of the narrative is interrupted by these Homeric similes which possess an aesthetic function for the text. The similes follow after a particular action a character has done or a heavy felt emotion a character is presently feeling. The purpose of these similes is the question at hand. In this particular simile, Odysseus’ spotting of land is compared to children witnessing the joy their father is feeling after being released from the hands of suffering. It starts off by addressing the reader (or the audience) directly: “You know…”; drawing in the reader more deeply into the story by engaging the reader’s personal experience. The narrator seeks to awaken the subjectivity of the reader when it supposes that the reader knows “how precious a father’s life is”. The purpose of engaging the subjectivity of the reader is to put him/her into a first person perspective, whereas throughout the text the reader has been an objective third person observer. But now that the narrator has awaken the reader and has brought him/her to the foreground, the “spasm of joy” Odysseus feels as he sees land should be felt by the reader as well. Therefore, in it’s immediate context, this simile helps transition the reader from a third-person observer to a phenomenological first-person perceiver of Odysseus’ feeling of joy.
From a more holistic perspective this simile may serve a more deeper purpose. In it’s displacement from its immediate context, this simile invokes the relationship between Telemachus and Odysseus. The spasm of joy that rubs off Odysseus’ suffering will occur when Odysseus meets Telemachus once again. In this context, the simile arouses the anticipation of the moment when the hero encounters his son. But what is troubling in the reading so far is that Odysseus has mentioned Penelope to Calypso, his native land and even his high-ceiling halls of his home to Alcinous, but he has not said a word of Telemachus yet. This bolsters the effect of the future encounter further. It raises questions and doubts whether Odysseus even remembers that he has a son, or if he would be able to recognize him when they meet. Odysseus even goes on to say that the “young are thoughtless” (line 315, book 7)- while his own young son is sailing the wine-dark seas collecting memories and information of his father’s whereabouts. The third line, “Gripped by a malevolent spirit and melting away” could be paralleled to the divine trials and tribulations that keep holding Odysseus back from reaching his home, but is Odysseus going through these divine hardships and this journey home for the sake of his son or does he have a different ulterior motive? Thus, in this holistic perspective, this outlier serves as an anticipation of the moment the hero meets his son; and keeping the subjective nature of this simile in mind we shouldn’t be dormant third-person observers when this event occurs.
Hi Syed,
You’re absolutely right that the simile does two kinds of work. Overtly, Homer compares Odysseus to the *children* of the formerly sick man; his joy at finding land is like their joy at their father’s recovery. Yet the terms of the analogy invite us to relate the scenario–an almost-lost father, children at first sorrowing, then joyful–to Telemachus’ and Odysseus’ situation. Odysseus occupies both positions, then: as the father (because he IS a father) and as the rejoicing children (because he is, in this moment, rejoicing). Do other similes work in this way–do they apply, in complicated, multifaceted ways, to the ‘literal’ scenario they express and re-describe?
Well, this is why I tried to emphasize the subjective nature of these similes, it can be debated whether the similes can be related to the surrounding text or not, I think it depends on how one percieves them. I’m not sure if there’s any criteria that tells us anything definitive on the roles of these similes. However, I would say each simile works in it’s own heterogeneous way, so some may have a multifaceted function while some may not.