Similes and Narrative Structure in the Iliad

Abstract

The Homeric simile functions on several levels in each of its appearances throughout the Iliad, creating emphasis and indicating the importance of a scene, character, or moment to the audience. Approaching the Iliad from an oral traditional perspective and accepting the idea of composition in performance, I take a close look at several sequences of similes in the poem, observing how the various sequences and patterns lend a degree of narrative structure to the poem and direct the audience's attention to a articulate thematic idea. I primarily focus on the similes repeatedly used to describes deaths on the battlefield and explain how the development of this pattern becomes familiar to an audience. I examine the absences of the anticipated death simile in the cases of both Patroklos and Hektor and interpret what implications this has for each of the characters and the larger narrative. In order to fully understand the context surrounding both of these scenes, I closely analyze the simile sequences in Books 16 and 22 that lead up to the deaths of Patroklos and Hektor, arguing that in exempting the simile at the moment of death, the narrator actually places a larger emphasis on the characters themselves, which becomes all the more powerful for an audience sensitive to the normal occurrence of the death simile.