Question

read the excerpt from the odyssey. here are the means i thought would serve my turn: a club, or staff, lay there along the fold— an olive tree, felled green and left to season for cyclops’ hand. and it was like a mast a lugger of twenty oars, broad in the beam— a deep - sea - going craft—might carry: so long, so big around, it seemed. based on the epic simile, how should the reader picture the beam of wood odysseus found in the cave? like a deep - sea - going ship or vessel like an olive tree, just felled and still green like the cyclops, large and wide like the mast of an enormously large ship

Explanation:

To solve this, we analyze the epic simile in the excerpt. The text says "And it was like a mast a lugger of twenty oars, broad in the beam— a deep - sea - going craft—might carry: so long, so big around, it seemed." This shows the beam of wood is compared to the mast of a very large ship (the lugger with twenty oars, a deep - sea - going craft). Let's eliminate other options:

• Option 1: The simile compares the beam to a mast, not the whole ship.
• Option 2: The beam is compared to a mast, not an olive tree (the olive tree is what the beam was before being a club/staff).
• Option 3: The beam is compared to a mast, not the Cyclops.

Answer:

D. like the mast of an enormously large ship