The Odyssey and The Most Dangerous Game

After reading both The Dangerous Game and The Odyssey, I see many similarities and differences between them.

First, both books use this formula: desire plus danger equals drama. In both stories, the characters have a desire for something.  When someone has a desire for something, it becomes their goal to reach it.  When they are trying to reach it, if some danger steps in the way, you get drama.  The story starts to get more intense, and there is unknown whether or not the character will achieve their goal despite the dangers they face, or if the dangers will be too much for them.  In The Odyssey, the main character Ulysses has the desire to reach Ithaca, his home.  When he tries to get home, there's a lot of danger that gets in the way.  He has to go past six-headed monsters, find a way to get out of a cyclops’ cave, and deal with the raging waters that Neptune creates for him.  This creates the drama of whether or not he will get home, or if one of the dangers that he faces will kill him or permanently prevent him from getting back to Ithaca in some other way.  In The Most Dangerous Game, Rainsford’s desire is to get away from the general who is trying to hunt him, and win the game so that he can leave Ship-Trap Island.  He is obviously faced with danger.  The danger is that the general, who is an amazing hunter, is hunting him, and is trying to shoot and kill him.  Also, he has a pack of dogs with him in some parts of the story, and they’re trying to kill Rainsford also.  These two aspects of the story create drama together.  There is the drama of whether or not Rainsford will make it off of the island alive, or if he won’t survive the dangers he is faced with, and will die.

These two books can be compared in many other ways also. One way is that The Odyssey and The Most Dangerous Game both have external conflicts.  In The Odyssey, Ulysses’ conflict is between himself and other characters.  The characters against him include Neptune, the suitors, and many others.  In The Most Dangerous Game, the conflict is between Rainsford and the general, which is a character vs character conflict.  As for the complications of the story, The Odyssey has many complications.  Along Ulysses’ journey, he is faced with complications that keep him from returning to Ithaca.  One complication would be Polyphemus, the cyclops.  He wanted to eat Ulysses and his men, and keep them from getting out of his cave.  Another complication Ulysses faced was getting away from Calypso, who had been detaining him.  In The Most Dangerous Game, there is one complication, which is that the general and his dogs are trying to kill Rainsford, and Rainsford has to stay alive for three days.  Finally, while there are no flashbacks in The Most Dangerous Game, there is one in The Odyssey.  When Ulysses tells his journey to the Phaeacian king, it is sort of flashback.  The first part of The Odyssey that mentions Ulysses is when Ulysses is on the island of Calypso.  After this, he reaches the Phaeacians.  When he tells king Alcinous about his journey, it goes back in time, well before he reaches the island of Calypso.  It is a flashback to all of the complications of his journey that went on before he got to Calypso.

There are still many other comparisons that can be made between these two stories. Overall, I think both stories are good ones, but I enjoyed reading The Most Dangerous Game a lot more. It was much more interesting to me.

Final Reactions to The Odyssey

This week I finished reading The Odyssey.  I found the ending really interesting.  Now that I am done reading it, I can say that even though it wasn’t my favorite, it definitely wasn’t as bad as I thought it was.

First, this week I read about Ulysses finally taking revenge on the suitors, and reuniting with his wife and father.  I was really glad when he killed Antinous first, out of all the suitors, because Antinous was such a cruel and evil person.  It was interesting how the second worst suitor, Eurymachus, tried to blame all of the suitors’ evils on Antinous so that Ulysses wouldn’t kill the rest of them.  Eurymachus would not own up to all of his own evil deeds.  I think that when the women were killed, it seemed like they were killed a crueler way, even though the things they did weren’t as bad compared to the suitors.  Then, when Ulysses finally revealed himself to his wife, I was so glad, because throughout the whole book, all Penelope ever did was mourn the loss of her husband.  The very end of the book, however, didn’t seem very good to me.  It ended with Minerva making peace between the families of the dead suitors, and Ulysses.  But, only one sentence was used to say this, and it seemed like it ended too soon.  It didn’t fully wrap up the story.

I’ve noticed many things while reading this epic poem.  One is that repetition is used throughout the story.  It gets annoying when you’re reading it, but it makes sense that it’s there because the story used to be told out loud, and had to be memorized.  The line that probably gets repeated the most is “rosy-fingered dawn.”  Another line is “tell me, and tell me true.”  Also, throughout the book, the men(in many cases) seem to treat the women badly.  One example would be Telemachus, who says many things to his mother that come off as really rude.  One time, when Penelope was telling Eurymachus that the stranger(Ulysses) should be able to string the bow that all the suitors were trying to string, Telemachus told his mother that no one but him has any say in if someone gets the bow or not, and she should busy herself inside.  He said that the bow was a man’s matter, which seemed really rude.  Also, I noticed that the climax of this story is near the end.  The majority of the book is action that sets the story up for when Ulysses returns and kills all of the suitors.

The reading this week was very interesting.  Overall, the story came to a good end.