Question

Read the excerpt from The Odyssey. In a smithy one sees a white-hot axehead 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 use of the epic simile in this excerpt helps the reader understand
-that the Cyclops only has one eye.
-how brutal Odysseus and his men are.
-the size of the wooden spear.
-how hot the spear actually is.

Answer 1

The correct answer of the given question above would be the last option. Based on the excerpt from "The Odyssey", the use of the epic simile in this excerpt helps the reader understand how hot the spear actually is. Hope this answer helps. 

Answer 2

The answer is: how hot the spear is.

An epic simile, or Homeric simile, is a comparison between something familiar or ordinary and something strange. It is usually many lines long and it helps the reader make the scene described, usually at moments of turmoil or battle, more vivid. In the epic simile above, Homer makes the reader understand how hot the spear that blinds the cyclops is by comparing the eye of the cyclops to a cold tub as the spear that blinded him penetrates it, just like a piece of metal would enter a tub in order to be molded.