Now, at last, I thrust our stake in a bed of embers to get it red-hot and rallied all my comrades: 'Courage no panic, no one hold back now!' And green as it was, just as the olive stake was about to catch fire- the glow terrific yes- I dragged it from the flames, my men clustering round as some god breathed enormous courage through us all. Hoisting high that olive stake with its stabbing point, straight into the monster's eye they rammed it hard- I drove my weight on it from above and bored it home as a shipwright bores his beam with a shipwright's drill that men below, whipping the strap back and forth, whirl and the drill keeps twisting faster, never stopping- So we seized our stake with its fiery tip and bored it round and round in the giants eye till blood came boiling up around that smoking shaft and the hot blast singed his brow and eyelids around the core and the broiling eyeball burst.

     This passage from the Odyssey is from the cyclops' layer, during Odysseus's escape. The short story of the escape in its self  is well known. I believe one of  the reasons for this is because of the imagery that Homer uses through Odysseus's character. This small scene from the much greater text being one of the most case-making passages. The poetry used to paint the vivid picture of the cyclops going blind is so well crafted that the reader gets such a life-like image some become ill from the thoughts of the scene. Using such descriptions as "thrust the stake in a bed of embers to make it red-hot" and "I drove my weight on it from above and bored it home..." creates such an intense scene that it is hard not to get wrapped up in the brutality of the encounter. As if to make it harder to turn your eyes from the scene, Homer integrates a hint of Odysseus's madness into the scene by adding small lines like 'the glow terrific yes' and 'we seized our stake... and bore it round and round in the giants eye till... the eye burst'. Adding these small lines into Odysseus's speech, mixed with the intensity moment makes the whole process seem wonderfully mad.