Question

as in a smithy
one sees a white-hot axhead or an adze
plunged and wrung in a cold tub, screeching steam
the way they make soft iron hale and hard :
just so that eyeball hissed around the spike.

• the odyssey,

homer
based on the epic simile, how should the poem’s
historian picture the cyclops’s eye?
○ like a smithy’s short hill of increasing heat
○ like a soft, cold piece of iron
○ like a hissing piece of hot metal in cold water

Explanation:

The simile in the text compares a snuffy's red-hot ironhead in cold fish (shrinking, making its iron hide hard) to the Cyclops' eye reaction. A burning hot metal in cold water would shrink/harden, matching the simile's logic. The other options (snuffy's brief hit or soft cold iron) don't align with the heat - cold interaction causing a change like the simile describes.

Answer:

like a burning piece of hot metal in cold water