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." So the beam of wood is compared to the mast of a very large (enormously large) ship. Let's eliminate other options:

• Option 1: It's compared to the mast, not the ship itself.
• Option 2: The wood is an olive tree felled green, but the simile for how to picture the beam is about the mast, not the olive tree's felling state.
• Option 3: It's compared to a mast, not the Cyclops.

Answer:

D. like the mast of an enormously large ship