In the eighth book of Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus is on the island of the Phaeacians and is waiting to return home to Ithaca. Meanwhile, Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, has organized a feast and games celebration in honor of Odysseus, who has not yet revealed his true identity. During the festival, a blind bard named Demodocus sings of the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles in Troy. The song causes Odysseus to begin to cry, so Alcinous ends the feast and orders the games to begin. During the dinner after the games, Odysseus asks Demodocus to sing about the Trojan Horse and the sack of Troy. This song also makes Odysseus cry. Homer uses a dramatic simile to describe the pain and sadness that Odysseus feels as he remembers the story of Troy. The simile passage is the first paragraph in verse that follows several paragraphs in prose. The structure of the verse is free to follow rhythmic or syllabic patterns. Although the form has no specific meaning to the content, perhaps it is written in verse to seem somewhat poetic. Since the scene is very descriptive and dramatic, it is appropriate to write it with a poetic structure rather than simple prose. Homer compares the weeping Odysseus to a woman weeping for her husband who died in battle. The weeping woman is described in a very dramatic scene to reflect the intensity of the pain that Odysseus is feeling. The “woman cries as she throws herself on the fallen body of her dear husband.” As she “clings to him, [she] groans,” and then “the enemies behind her strike her on the back and shoulders, then carry her away to slavery, trials, and misery.” The woman goes through many difficulties, which explains why “her cheeks are worn with pain.” Not only does her husband die, but the enemies strike her with their spears and take her away to make her suffer further. By comparing Odysseus' crying to the crying woman in this intense scene of misery, Homer is able to show the reader the degree of pain that Odysseus feels. The simile of the crying woman also induces a feeling of sympathy for Ulysses in the protagonist's mind. reader. The image of a woman crying for her dead husband is sadder than the crying of the heroic Odysseus. The scene focuses on family and love, describing the dead husband as “a man who tried to keep the day of doom from his children and his beloved home”..