The Odyssey And The Hitchhikers Guide To The Odyssey

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Odyssey The model of The Hero’s Journey has been used in a multitude of ways through the development of literature. This famous plot line describes the series of epic events that a hero faces throughout the story to ultimately find the solution to a problem. As shown in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, and The Odyssey, by Homer, The Hero’s Journey has guided authors to write their stories in the past and even today. Odysseus and Arthur Dent, described by Homer and Douglas Adams, both possess heroic characteristics and display these as they venture though their worlds. The two characters face similar challenges, and while they handle their quests differently, the tales are similar in the†¦show more content†¦At the beginning of the Odyssey, Odysseus had been gone from home for ten years as a result of the Trojan war. Both heroes begin their journey in their ordinary worlds. Fortunately, stories a re made exciting by having characters venture out of their comfortable and loving homes and into dangerous and unknown territory. A critical part of the hero’s quest is when he or she crosses into the unknown world. Homer demonstrated this step in his epic poem by having Odysseus finally being freed off Calypso’s island. Calypso was a beautiful nymph who trapped Odysseus on her island for seven years. â€Å"Though have been detained long by Calypso, loveliest among goddesses, who held me in her smooth cave, to be her heart’s delight,† (Homer p. 1047). Odysseus is freed by praying to Zeus and Athena who let him start his journey home. In Douglas Adams’s novel, there is a much more futuristic threshold crossing. When the Vogons, an alien species, come to destroy Earth, Ford Prefect, one of Arthur’s mentors, managed to hitch a lift into a Vogon construction fleet ships just as the Earth was being demolished for an intergalactic highway. â€Å" Excuse me?† said Arthur. â€Å"Are you trying to tell me that we just stuck our thumbs out and some green, bug-eyed monster stuck his head out and said, ‘Hi fellas. Hop right in. I can take you as far as the Basingstoke roundabout?’† â€Å"Well,† said Ford. â€Å"The thumb’s an electronic sub-etha signaling device, the roundabout’s atShow MoreRelatedLife before Advanced Portable Technology601 Words   |  2 Pagestouchscreen devices have been many years in the making, In the 1966 television show â€Å"Star Trek Captain Kirk had the PADD (Personal Access Display Device) (Star Trek)† , â€Å"The 1968 movie 2001: Space Odyssey, there was a similar device called the Newspad† (Sande). A device by the same name was described in Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy aired on BBC radio in weekly segments, starting on March 8, 1978, and published in a novel in 1979 (Adams) History of the Tablet before the 2010 Explosion. Scientist started