Although Homer does not use personification often in the Cyclops section of The Odyssey, there is a striking use of personification that can be seen when the men are escaping. The Cyclops, who has been blinded by the men, has rolled the massive rock away from the cave entrance to allow the rams to leave for the pasture, but he reaches his hands down to feel for any escaping men. However, clever Odysseus has tied his men under the rams so they can get out of the cave alive.
Three abreast
I tied them silently together….
then slung a man under each middle one
to ride there safely, shielded left and right.
(Robert Fitzgerald translation)
The men are able to be carried out of the cave and escape without detection. Odysseus himself escapes by holding on to the belly of the largest ram. But his weight slows the ram...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
down considerably, especially as only one ram is carrying all of his weight. When the Cyclops notices how slow the ram is, he talks to the ram sweetly, personifying the ram as if the animal were capable of human emotion.
Sweet cousin ram, why lag behind the rest
in the night cave? You never linger so…
Why, now, so far behind? Can you be grieving
over your Master’s eye?
To hear the Cyclops speak with such tenderness and to imagine the ram as capable of such grief is a surprising use of personification, especially since we have just seen the Cyclops brutally murder and eat Odysseus’s companions without a second thought.
Another example of personification is when Homer describes the Dawn as having “fingertips of rose,” an epithet used repeatedly in The Odyssey.
When the young Dawn with fingertips of rose
touched the world, I roused the men, gave orders
to man the ships, cast off the mooring lines…
Dawn is described as a person, whose rosy fingertips touch the world, bringing the rosy beginnings of a new day and allowing the world to be free from the darkness of the night.
The chapter on the Cyclopes (with Polyphemus, and all the humourous word play about "nobody") is full of foreshadowing about how difficult it will be for Odysseus to actually make the journey home.
Personification, or giving an inanimate object human characteristics is used in this chapter sparingly.
Dawn is referenced as having fingertips. "the young dawn stretched up her fingertips..." describing how the rays of sunlight at the very start of the day reached up, as fingers. Strikingly similar to people, when we wake up and stretch out our arms to help awake.
Death too is given a personification, that of sitting. "Death sat there huge" - As death is clearly not a person, sitting is the personification. This image implies that death is merely waiting, and large in the mind of the hero, an ominous image for the reader to understand what Odysseus is going through.
References