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The aspect of the conflict is vitally important to any well-written story. Having major conflicts within a story keeps the reader interested. The story of the Odyssey is a perfect example of how conflict can continuously propel a story. Odyssey, who plays a hard-headed, imperfect protagonist, is faced with a series of strenuous disputes due to his inability to listen. I will analyze each conflict in the appropriate chapters and describe the elements of each conflict within the story.
The ancient story of the Odyssey is captivating to its readers due to its layered array of conflicts.
It focuses on Odysseus, who deals with a plethora of disputes before he can achieve what he desires. The story of the Odyssey starts after Odysseus’s victory in the Trojan War. Being that Odysseus’s win was mainly due to the help of Poseidon, the god of the Sea, Poseidon felt he was owed thanks to Odysseus and his men. Odysseus refuses to give Poseidon his thanks and sets off on his journey home.
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This angers Poseidon, and he creates trouble for Odysseus and his men. The theme of Odysseus not heeding the warning of the Gods reoccurs throughout the story. This is our first conflict within the story, and it focuses on man v. God. Because he refused to thank Poseidon, Odysseus creates conflict for himself and makes his trip home longer. We find Odysseus trapped on the island of Ogygia by the goddess Calypso. Calypso has fallen in love with Odysseus, and she refuses to let him leave this island.
Here is where we find our next external conflict, which focuses on man vs. God and our first internal conflict within Odysseus. While he is stranded on the island, Calypso tempts him to stay with her by offering him immortality. This creates an internal struggle for Odysseus to either love Calypso back or remain faithful to his wife. Ultimately, Odysseus chooses his wife over Calypso.
In Book 5, Odysseus is granted passage to leave Calypso’s island due to the Gods’ intervention. Calypso, reluctantly, helps him to build a boat to sail away, and Odysseus soon finds himself on the island of Scheria. Here is where Odysseus crosses paths with Poseidon again, who becomes enraged at the decision the Gods made without him. He conjures a storm against Odysseus and attacks him. Here is another example of an external conflict that involves man v. God. This time around, Odysseus receives help from the goddess Ino, who gives him a cloak to protect him in the storm. With his ship having been destroyed, Odysseus is swept into the ocean at the mercy of Poseidon’s rage. We can also determine that this scenario represents Odysseus and his conflict with nature. The ocean is the natural boundary that is keeping Odysseus from his family. He finally washes to shore where a princess comes to his aid, with the help of Athena.
The princess shows Odysseus the way to the palace, and he manages to convince the King and Queen to aid him in his journey. After seeing Odysseus saddened by Democritus’s song of the Trojan War, King Alcious demanded to know who he was. Odysseus then tells us of his previous journey, which was riddled with many conflicts. After leaving Troy, Odysseus lost men on the island of Cicone due to their greed and inability to move after they pillaged the land. Next, Odysseus and his men are swept by a storm to an island where the inhabitants intoxicate his men with mysterious fruit. The men, under the spell of the fruit, forgot about their homes and wanted to stay on the island. Odysseus managed to escape this predicament by locking his men in cages on the ships and sailing away. Within this scenario, we find each of Odysseus’s men experiencing an internal conflict on whether to eat fruit and stay or return home. Odysseus, who managed to evade the effects of the fruit, had a conflict that exhibited man v. man because he needs to force his crew off of the island. Odysseus then arrives at the island of the cyclops, and there, he finds bountiful sheep and resources. After being tempted in the cave of Polyphemus, Poseidon's son, Odysseus and his men were held captive by the cyclops. A giant rock is used to block the entrance of the cave. Odysseus manages to trick the cyclops and escape to the ship on the bellies of sheep. While sailing away, Odysseus boasts his real name to Polyphemus, who then prays to Poseidon to punish Odysseus. Poseidon goes on to summon a storm that trapped Odysseus on the island with Calypso. In this scenario, we see a conflict in nature and a conflict of man v. man. Due to the greed within Odysseus and his men, conflicts are created between them and the cyclops. We see a conflict in nature due to the giant rock that blocks their escape.
In the story “Inferno,” Dante Alighieri has used different literary elements to describe both the internal and external conflicts between characters. The main conflict presented in the narrative is Dante’s journey to find God in his life. In the story, the author has vividly described how the main character struggles to find God, who is supreme in a society where different factors hinder him. Throughout Dante Alighieri’s narrative Inferno, the main character lives a lost life consumed by the sins of the flesh. The author describes how Dante gets lost in the forest to symbolize how the human race has turned away from God due to their worldly desires.
Dante is also self-conflicted because he struggles with the pity he has for those punished in Hell, which is wrong since they are sinners. In the story, Hell is a place where all sinners are punished for their sins for eternity. Dante thinks that God’s form of justice of punishing sinners based on their sins is wrong. In Dante's allegorical version of Hell, God's justice requires that sinners' punishments be suited to their sins. The author indicates that punishing sinners should be based on the principle contrapasso, where all sins are categorized based on their degrees of severity. Throughout the novel, the author does not manage to solve this conflict. Furthermore, he learns to control his feeling of pity towards the condemned since punishment is a result of sins committed.
References
1.Alighieri, D. (2015). Inferno, Dante Alighieri. New York: Spark Publishing.
2.Austin, N. (2017). Nausikaa and the Word That Must Not Be Spoken: A Reading of Homer's Odyssey, Book Six. Arion, 25, 5.
3.Homer, & Wilson, E. R. (2018). The Odyssey. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
4.Thornton, A. (2015). People and themes in Homer's Odyssey. Routledge.
5.Vyshka, G. (2017). Pain and Infernal Pain in the Verses of Dante Alighieri.
The Aspect Of The Conflict In The Story. (2024, Feb 22). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/the-aspect-of-the-conflict-in-the-story-essay
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