Synthesis Write

The connection between "Gates of Fire" by Steven Pressfield and the poem "The Winners" is The way they both inscribe winning as a part of life, and that even in defeat you can be the victor if your heart is strong. In "Gates of Fire" the Spartans train almost their whole life, "through pain and loneliness and hate" to ensure the win, ensure the safety of their people, for "the weak are beaten at the start". But you cannot be considered a loser if you have lost for the greater good, or still have faith in your heart, as when the Spartans sent 300 men on a suicide mission to buy time for the rest of Greece to get ready. Although "the road is long, the dream is gone, the fighting heart still carries on" the men marched and fought to their death, but not in vein but for the greater good of all Greece's people. Also the Spartans are trained to "look on life and death as one" and to "drive through fear and doubt and sin". For when they die, their names will go down in history "amid the thin, immortal list", as they did in the after the battle of 300. where not only in actual history, but in the book the whole story is being told to and inscribed by Xerxes, king of the Persians, to always be had and remembered. At the battle of 300 the Spartans formed their lines at the hot gates, where 300 men pushed and fought back thousands of Persian soldiers, For "those only win who reach the gate" and the 300 Spartans were going to fight until the end, never letting up for a second, "with battered prow and shattered sail" they will fight. They have been trained never to give in, to "play their part", and that "this is no life for soul or heart, that breaks or falters at defeat". Another example of never giving up and struggling for the win is when Alexandros and Xio are left in the middle of the bay and have to swim to shore, and "through surf and storm and bitter gale" they make their way never giving up, never accepting defeat. Even for Xio, though he is not spartan he does not give up, even when "the sullen thrusts of fate" leave his hands crippled, destroying his dream of holding a shield and spear and fighting with the Spartans, he overcomes this and finds new ways and new weapons to use, to one day get back at his parents killers. It is quite evident that even though the poem "The Winners" and the novel "Gates of Fire" are so close and have so many connections, the most evident and meaningful connection is that life is full of winning and accomplishments, and that although we may and will lose sometimes, as long as we keep going, it was not a defeat and it will be the thing that is remembered and honored.