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A photo of the minotaur.
He is described as an ugly bull yet still compared as a human.

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Represents in showing how the girl was playing a game in which one must try to build a tower which eventually always ends up getting knocked down by god

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inspired by the biblical story of the tower of babel.

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The game she plays with the minotaur is just like the game ziggurat. The minotaur believes he is the strongest and toughest. After he meets the girl and at the end of the story he doesnt feel that way anymore. Something about the girl changes him

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The girl playing the game is a metaphor on how she acts with the mintaur. The girl and the minotaur both test each other. She does not understand why the minotaur didnt eat her. Now the mintoaur hasnt meet anyone like the girl someone as brave as her.

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The ziggurat is symbolism for the story itself. The story is written like the structure of a ziggurat.

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By: Angel Pantoja

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Certain themes run through most mythologies - themes that transcend culture, country and religion. From the story of the Tower of Babel to the hubris of Oedipus; from the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, to the myth of Beowulf and Grendel, we seem to like stories about people confronting forces that are greater than they are.

Recurring anxieties underlie many of our mythologies: how can we answer unanswerable questions if we are the most powerful and intelligent agents in our world? And if we're not the most powerful and intelligent agents in our world, then what, if anything, is greater than us; and if such an entity exists - how do we conquer, confront or understand it?

Stephen O'Connor has just published a story In the June 29, 2009 issue of The New Yorker called Ziggurat. The ziggurat is a Mesopotamian pyramid with steps leading upwards to the pinnacle and steps leading downward on all sides; the structure of O'Connor's story seems to be based on just this type of architecture.

The story begins with an unnamed girl sitting in a rec room playing video games while a Minotaur watches her by the pool table. Everything in the first paragraph has the aspect of gaming: there are the video games on the computer (a world of its own), the pool table, and finally the Labyrinth where the Minotaur encounters the girl. The reader isn't sure immediately what's game and what's setting.

This is the first act of the story, where Minotaur and girl play a zero-sum game - a game where each dances curiously around the other. The girl doesn't understand why the Minotaur doesn't eat her; she's been resignedly expecting him to do just that; the Minotaur, for his part, hasn't encountered a victim quite as resigned as this girl before, which is why he's hesitant to eat her; the only option remaining for them is to form a friendship.

When the Minotaur asks her about the video games she's playing, she describes them as "disappointment games." Even her favorite, "Ziggurat," a game re-enacting the building of Babel, is a disappointment game:

"You're supposed to build the Tower of Babel up before God knocks it down."

This is essentially the game she's playing with the Minotaur. The Minotaur believes he is the largest and most powerful agent in his environment; by the end of the story he will be almost minuscule, but he will also be profoundly changed by his relationship with this girl.

O'Connor's story borrows freely from familiar myths to construct this highly unusual (especially for The New Yorker) story about learning humility and empathy. Before the girl's appearance Minotaur's murders have no moral resonance with him one way or the next. He gets hungry and so he eats; simple as that. (Except for the fact that he's "the agent of his own appetite") But after she disappears his vocabulary expands. He begins to understand loss, shame, joylessness and regret. The Minotaur is becoming more and more like the humans he used to disdain. This is when the Minotaur attempts to build his own Tower of Babel. Does this desire to know more of his world come from the girl's suggestion that there is a possibility of escape? Who is the blue-faced man, and why does he seem to have power over the Minotaur? Is there some force beyond the Minotaur more powerful than he is? This mythological possibility of another world becomes the apex of the story; he builds a ziggurat, only to find himself in a world of plaster - everything from here on out will only serve to prove just how small he is.

O'Connor's a very effective writer, although sometimes his prose comes across as a little quaint and cutesy, especially his repetitive use of onomatopoeia:

"She didn't even glance away from the screen. Just: twitch, twitch, twitch, clickity-clackity-click, click-click-click. "Oof !" she would say. "Oh, my God!"

To me, this kind of prose is highly distracting, though I suppose another reader might find it fun and charming - disarming, even, which I assume is how O'Connor intends it. There are also moments where O'Connor's choppy sentences and his odd insistence on beginning sentences with conjunctions also distract. These are small issues, however, with an otherwise engaging and thought provoking story, that I'm sure I'll be thinking about for a while.

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Myth and Meaning in Stephen O'Connor's Ziggurat

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Certain themes run through most mythologies - themes that transcend culture, country and religion. From the story of the Tower of Babel to the hubris of Oedipus; from the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, to the myth of Beowulf and Grendel, we seem to like stories about people confronting forces that are greater than they are.

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By: Kaitlyn Farris
minotaur is half human half  bull he comes across a girl that shows no fear for him and then girl comes around he  starts to resemble a human and not so much a bull  because she shows him things that humans do and he becomes very interested in it and doesn't even try to eat her. Minotaur is practically trying to fight his best side of him  and the girl is  scared of what he is capable of but doesn't show him that she is which makes him confused and interested in her for that.

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By: Deana Camarena

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By: Quang Nguyen

Blue Figure and Watchmen:
Throughout the story, a blue figure with round glasses and a mustache would appear to interfere with the characters. In the game, Ziggurat, the blue figure destroys the tower that the girl is trying to build, and the Minotaur even meets the blue figured man in his office. This blue figure, believed to represent the creator is a reference to the movie Watchmen where Dr.Manhattan, a man turned into a god by an experiment gone awry. Dr. Manhattan is completely blue and posses the power to destroy the world if he so pleases, much like the blue figure in this story.

Minotaur and Polyphemus:
The Minotaur lures a dog towards the tunnel, catches it, and rips it in half midair devouring its warm blood for fun. His blood thirst matches that of Polyphemus, the cyclops from the Odyssey who devours Odysseus's men to satisfy his hunger.

Minotaur and Death:
The Minotaur states that humans were "created to be destroyed". He wanted to be the messenger of truth, that everything alive will die. Very similar to the doctrine of predestination where God has already determined one's path in life.

Ziggurat and Inception:
After the Minotaur builds the ziggurat to the sky only to find a plaster wall as the ceiling, he breaks through and climbs out room. He climbs into a dark cinder-block tunnel which led back to the room where he found the girl in the beginning. He left the ziggurat tower and ended up back in the start, very much like an inception theme that

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By: Alejandra Galindo

Minotaur is a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man.  Sulking means to lie or hide for evil reason. Minotaur that meets a girl and makes him find his inner human because she teaches him how to do things and he is amazed how she is not frighten of him so he starts questioning himself. In conclusion, we figured out that the "new girl" was actually  a voice in his head that brought out his humanity side. The tower of ziggart connects  to the tower of Babble because it symbolizes God.