An epic is usually described as a long poem usually spoken, telling stories about heroes and adventures. The Odyssey is a perfect example of an epic. Homer’s way of words makes the book more enjoyable to the reader. “The language of the Homeric poems is a creation of epic verse.” (12) There nine main characteristics in an epic including; the setting changes many times, begins with a Muse, using epithets, and speaking in long lists. The setting in The Odyssey changes a variety of times. The settings change almost in an instant, there is no inbetween. “The wind drove me out of Ilium to Ismarus, the Cicones’ stronghold” (212) Odysseus and his crew traveled a far distance but the reader doesn’t have the uninteresting in between. “Then on the tenth
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Most people ask multiple questions when meeting someone for the first time. “But about your guest dear boy, I have some questions. Where does he come from? Where’s his country, his birth, his father’s old estates? Did he bring news of your father, his return? Or did he come on business of his own?”(90) eurymachus asks all these questions in a row to get the information he needs to know about Mentor and then Telemachus answers all the questions. “What form of death overcame you, what laid you low, some long slow illness? Or did Artemis showering arrows come with her painless shafts and bring you down? Tell me of father, tell of the son I left behind: Or does some stranger hold the throne by now because men think I’ll come home no more? Please, tell me about my wife, her turn of mind, still guarding our great estates, secure as ever now? Or has she wed some other countryman at last, the finest prince among them?”(255) While in the Kingdom of The Dead, Odysseus finds his mother who had recently died. He asks her many questions about his home and how she died since he’s been away for so long. She then proceeds to tell him she died of grief and heartbreak at the thought of her son not returning. She tells him Penelope and Telemachus are fine and that Penelope has not remarried and is waiting for
Most people ask multiple questions when meeting someone for the first time. “But about your guest dear boy, I have some questions. Where does he come from? Where’s his country, his birth, his father’s old estates? Did he bring news of your father, his return? Or did he come on business of his own?”(90) eurymachus asks all these questions in a row to get the information he needs to know about Mentor and then Telemachus answers all the questions. “What form of death overcame you, what laid you low, some long slow illness? Or did Artemis showering arrows come with her painless shafts and bring you down? Tell me of father, tell of the son I left behind: Or does some stranger hold the throne by now because men think I’ll come home no more? Please, tell me about my wife, her turn of mind, still guarding our great estates, secure as ever now? Or has she wed some other countryman at last, the finest prince among them?”(255) While in the Kingdom of The Dead, Odysseus finds his mother who had recently died. He asks her many questions about his home and how she died since he’s been away for so long. She then proceeds to tell him she died of grief and heartbreak at the thought of her son not returning. She tells him Penelope and Telemachus are fine and that Penelope has not remarried and is waiting for