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Use Of Diction In The Odyssey

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Through the use of diction in The Odyssey, Homer expresses a desperate tone. In the story, “Scylla and Charybdis,” Odysseus and his men must sail between a large whirlpool, known as Charybdis, and Scylla, a rock monster that eats men. Through this enervating sail, the men suffer many losses, and Homer uses a desperate tone to convey the amount of stress and pain they experienced during this trial.
In the story, “Scylla and Charybdis,” Homer uses an epic simile to compare the way Scylla eats the men to the way a fisherman catches fish. In line 815 through 819, Homer writes, “A man surfcasting on a point of rock… will hook a fish and rip it from the surface to dangle wriggling through the air.” The connotation of the word wriggling is to twist and turn with quick writhing movements, and the denotation is the same, showing the reader that a huge effort is made in trying to escape. By using the word wriggling to describe the actions of the captured men, the author creates a tone of desperation. The tone is desperate because the description of the men’s movements implies that they are fiercely trying to survive, but they are not succeeding in escaping Scylla’s grasp. …show more content…
In line 794 and 795, he writes, “And all this time, in travail, sobbing, gaining on the current...” The connotation of travail is a painful or lugubrious effort. The denotation of travail is the same as its connotation, and it is used to describe the pain and effort of the men as they sailed, knowing that they had to lose some of their men to the sea monster. The use of the word travail to describe the men’s journey adds to the desperate tone because it shows that the author knows that no matter how devastated the men were, they still had to sail away from Scylla and Charybdis as quickly as they could in order to make it out

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