Snare Of The Fowler, parts 2208 - 2211

 2208. Otis, as a matter of fact, was critical of Odysseus for breaking Irus’ collar bone like he did. Poor Irus, blundering into a situation, hardly of his own making, and then being made a  cripple just to entertain millions of people who would read the Odyssey in the coming millenniums. Just for a moment consider how many dim-witted people over thousands of years have smiled to themselves as Odysseus gives Irus a lecture as he leans him up against that wall. 

 

2209 Do any of those readers of the Odyssey ever consider the sufferings and trials that Irus probably went through before he was immortalized in Homers’ epic drama? No, they do not give him a thought. The book is opened and the passage read by some high school student, and once again Irus had to take his beating. Irus is just like Prometheus rolling his rock up his mountain. But nobody mocks or ridicules Prometheus, we all feel sorry for him, and more than that, we can’t help but identify with him.

 2210. Who identifies with Irus, or Leon for that matter. Nobody, they are truly outcasts. They do not even rise to the lever of being anti-heroes. Their entire reason for existing is just to illicit our contempt. They exist on the world’s stage for a meager few moments for us to savor their humiliation. Their only crime having been to brag and swagger. But Otis, being the kind of wolf he was, could not bring himself to look down on Leon, and said to himself, “There but for fortune go I.”

2211. But Otis was not going to avoid his fate, especially since he was a pagan wolf. All those thousands of times he had prayed to his Gods were not going to be to no effect, but he had to accept the good with the bad, and part of the bad was the penchant of his Gods to enjoy the pitched battle with an unknown outcome.