Dewey Gram “Gladiator” review

by Albertina Lebron, July 2015

300 words

1 page

essay

Dewey Gram “Gladiator”

“Gladiator” by Dewey Gram is one of the books I have read. Dewey Gram is an author of well acclaimed books and screenplays and a journalist as well. He has created the wonderful novel “Gladiator” and made its adaptation for the movie. He writes not only historical fiction but different kinds of novels and as examples of his other works one can name “The Ghost and the Darkness”, “Babies Country”, “Fallen”, and “Ocean’s 11” [Gram, 2000, p.3]. Yet “Gladiator” is perhaps the most well known, because it does not purely entertain, but creates a trustworthy picture of life in the Ancient Rome and proves the old maxima – things which people do will live long after the doers die [Gram, 2000, p. 4]. In other words – human values, love for the land and for its people are more important for any ruler that aristocratic blood or grand shows organized to satisfy the poorest.

The overall story is based on realities of life and fight for power among the Roman aristocracy: Maximus was a military general in the Roman army who was highly praised by Marcus Aurelius, the emperor [Gram, 2000, p.8]. Marcus expected Maximus to become an emperor after his death because he thought his son Commodus to be a bad ruler [ibid, p.10]. To take up power, Commodus murdered his father Marcus and ordered to kill Maximus and his family. The brave general lost his family and was enslaved himself. Later he was sold to a gladiator school at Morocco and his breathtaking “career” as a gladiator began. His military skills helped him to fight his way on the arenas through Africa to Rome, where he finally saw his enemy Commodus and learned about his plot against senators and careless and cruel way ruling. From now on Maximus not only seeks revenge, but also wants to save Rome and its people from the tyrant. Plots against Commodus did not work, and finally Maximus was challenged by the emperor to fight on the arena of Coliseum. The book offers more truthful ending: Maximus was mortally wounded by Commodus before the fight, but in the last combat on the arena defeated the emperor out of revenge and desire to kill the bloody ruler [Gram, 2000, p.235]. Thus his death was not the death of a gladiator, but of a hero of the Roman people. The movie is more optimistic – the duel takes place, Maximus slaughters the emperor and then re-establishes the ruling body of senators as the authority of Rome. By doing this he finally took the revenge of his family murder.

One of the leading Gladiator's themes is life of Roman gladiators and the idea that supremacy comes from controlling the crowd. Particularly, the book showed that victorious gladiators were those who did not simply satisfy the crowd's longing for blood, but did it in an unusual spectacular way [Gram, 2000; Shadrake, 2005]. Those fighters who became the public’s favorites, could some day …

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