Knowing the End to be the Beginning

"In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun."

We must know our ends and experience our ends to understand where we come from and what we think.  Understanding or gaining insight on why we think the way we think gives true insight into where those thought have come from and how they came to be.  This is a process of going back and forth and back again.  As life moves in its circular nature, so do our thoughts, actions, and feelings.  It is a constant may-go-round, but knowledge is discovered as the cycle continues.  I have truly enjoyed this class and have the opportunity to have Dr. Sexson as a teacher. He is a true gem of a person and I will always remember his depth of knowledge and  the relate able person he is.  As I think back over the semester and all the class discussions, I find myself remembering and somewhat reliving several moments in my mind. This to me is the process of Myth....Beginnings, middles, and ends and then back again.

My final Paper- Henderson the Rain King

"For however vast the increase of knowledge and of power which the future may have in store for man, he can scarcely hope to stay the sweep of those great forces which seem to be making silently but relentlessly for the destruction of all this starry universe in which our earth swims as a speck or mote."

Sara Landry

LIT 285

Dr. Michael Sexson

12/06/2010

Henderson the Rain King

            Eugene Henderson is a middle ageing man that is robust in both nature and attitude.  His is a man that is at the point in his life where his has seen many things, but is still searching for something that is missing.  Eugene is a wealthy man, due to inheritance, that is searching for contentment and fulfillment that he sees will never happen because of social status or placement on the monetary latter.  So he decides to set off in life and find what he feels he does not possess.

            Henderson the Rain King winds its way through humor, memories, discontentment, friendship, disaster, and soul searching.  Eugene is an aging man that has gone through a marriage, divorce, and then marriage.  He served his country during the war and ended up with several children and a bad temper.  While reading this novel I was able to feel the effects that this temper had on others around him.  His wife, Lilly, at times seemed removed from his rants and raves, but the real power of his temper was felt after his housekeeper was found dead  because of his yelling.  This was a strong mental image and left an impact on me that Henderson was unhappy with where he was in life.

            Henderson’s journey in becoming a pig farmer added an under tone of humor to what value he put on materialistic things.  He ended up turning most of his estate into a pig farm and, to me, this read as almost a mocking attitude he had towards society and where value is placed.  His actions could be read as if he saw the sadness and waste that money and materialistic things where put before anything else.  I often saw Henderson as a grumpy, lonely old man that had no problem making sure everyone around him was feeling the same.

            After deciding to make a journey with a friend to Africa, Henderson purchased a one way ticket.  Not sure when or if he was going to return home, made him seem stark with life as it was and longing to get more out of it.  Making the decision to split from his friend’s safari after reaching Africa and having a disagreement with the friend’s wife, made Henderson seemed even more eager to find and walk towards the unknown.  I think that often the unknown in life becomes very appealing because of unhappy with where we are in our present situation.  This seemed like the struggle Henderson was having through the first half of the novel.  He was searching for a place in the world, but in the beginning may have not realized it yet.

            Henderson befriended Romilayu, who becomes his guide while in Africa.  He asks Romilayu to take him to the most native, far removed place he can.  They journey together to a remote village and Henderson is in awe at how different a culture and place he is in.  I think that his feeling of being alone was touched upon again during his stay in the Arnewi village.  He was perplexed by villagers that were morning of dying cattle.  He seemed to want to understand the close connection they felt with their cattle but could almost not imagine the reasons why.  His view of livestock and the villagers’ where very different, and he soon saw this after arriving in the Arnewi village.

            The Arnewi villagers would not let their cattle drink out of the local watering hole because it had frogs in it.  They said that the cattle could not drink the water because it was contaminated by the frogs.  Henderson had a hard time understanding this thought, because of his cultural differences and ideas on life existing with other life.  He tried to help out the Arnewi tribe by bombing the frogs, but in the process he ended up destroying the damn that secured their water supply.  Once again Henderson became an outcast and a loner.  He had his friend Romilayu with him; but still did not have a satisfied soul.

            Henderson went to the village of Wariri and befriended Dahfu, the king.  Dahfu soon teaches Henderson how to interact with a lion named Atti. Dahfu shares a philosophy that he has about who people are on the inside and out.  He says that your insides match who you are on the outside.  So if you have the soul of a lion then you will resemble a lion with your appearance.  Henderson has a moment of reflection on this.  He wonders that because of his experiences with pigs, does he resemble a pig.  I think that this was insight on how he was feeling on the inside.  I think Henderson was looking back on his life and how he interacted in it daily.  Picturing himself as a pig showed that he was feeling like one inside.  He was feeling the laziness, selfishness, and stubborn nature that he had lived his life.  This was a moment of self-discovery for Henderson.

            The path that Henderson traveled was an adventure.  He went from being a lonely, grumpy old man to returning home with a new sense of self.  He made a journey, like a lot of us do in our life, to self discovery.  He was trying to figure out why his soul was crying out to him, “I want”.  I think that whether you are a man on a journey in Africa, a college student, or a mythical character, contentment is always trying to be discovered.  ”How shall a man be broken for whom reality has no fixed dwelling!” (Bellow, 1959, p199).

            Henderson’s journey reminded me of the structure of our class.  There were the beginnings in which the unknown existed and some preconceived ideas of what the class was going to be like.  As Henderson set out on his journey to Africa, he was faced with the unknown of what and where his journey would take him.  The middles of his journey were filled with trials and new examination of who he was and how he lived his life.  During the middles of our class there were also trials and realizations of what we did not know and how we perceived myth verses reality.  I gain a whole new idea of what separated these two concepts.  Myth is the reality in which we live our daily lives.  “And moreover, it’s love that makes reality reality. The opposite makes the opposite.” (Bellow, 1959, p 269).   It has formed how we think about friendships, love, and turmoil.  During the ends of our class as well as in Henderson’s journey, there is finale.  Every story must come to an end so that a new one can start and the circle of beginnings, middles, and ends can take place. 

Ovid ch 6-10

"The spectacle of the great changes which annually pass over the face of the earth has powerfully impressed the minds of man in all ages, and stirred them to meditate on the causes of transformations so vast and wonderful."

Chapter Six

Arachne-Had a weaving contest with Athene and was turned into a spider

Niobe-a mother that had many children and was later turned to stone and placed on a mountain

Marsyas-challenged Apollo to a pipe contest and lost. Then Apollo riped his skin off and his tears became a river.

Pelops-Had an ivory shoulder because the gods were being tested and mistakenly ate part of him.
Boreas & Orithyia-Winged god that tried to win over Orithyia with words.

Chapter Seven

Medea & Jason-Medea helped Jason win the fleece because she was in love with him. He won and left with her.

Medea & Aeson-Medea used her magic to make her father, Aeson, younger.

Medea & Pelias-Medea tricked Pelias by saying she would make him younger. He bleed to death.

Theseus & Aegeus-Theseus was almost killed by poison from Medea, but his father Aegeu saved him.

Cephalus & Procris-they were out hunting together and Cephalus through a spear into a bush and accidentally kill his wife, Procris.

Chapter Eight

Scylla & Minos-Scylla killed her father and gave a lock of his purple hair to Minos.

The Minotaur-Half-man and half-bull who lived in the labyrinth.

Daedalus & Icarus-Deadalus was an inventor that tried to escape exile with his son by building wings to fly away.

Perdix-Was turned into a partridge after Deadulas killed him.

Baucis & Philemon-Little old couple who's house was turned into a temple. they died at the same time and became trees that shared the same trunk.

Chapter Nine

Achelous & Hercules-Fought each other over Deianria. Achelous turned into a bull and one of his horns were broken off.  It became a cornucopia.

Hercules, Deianira, Nessus-Nessus tried to steal Deianira away from Hercules when the were crossing a river.

Dryope-Was turned into a lotus tree because she was picking flowers.

Byblis & Caunus-Sister that feel in love with her brother.

Iphis & Ianthe-Iphis was born a girl and later was turned into a boy and married Ianthe.

Chapter Ten

Cyparissus-Was turned into a cypress tree because of accidentally killing.

Ganymede-Ganymede caught the eye of Jove. Jove turned into an eagle and took the boy.

Hyacinthus-Was stuck by Apollo's discus and was killed. Apollo turned him into a flower and had an annual feast.

Pygmalion-Carved a female statue out of ivory and fell in love with it.

Atalanta & Hippomenes-Married each other after having a race against each other. Hippomenes won.

Final Review for Test

"Great things will come of the pursuit, though we may not enjoy them.  Brighter stars will rise on some voyager of the future- some great Ulysses of the realms of thought- than shine on us. The dreams of magic may one day be the waking realities of science."

 

Lit 285 Review

12/9/2010

*Religions of the book-Muslim, Christianity, Buddhism

*Mythology helps to dictate how we interact in the world. I form what we think and why we think it. 

*group 1 Double myth game The only permanent thing? Change

*group 2- What is a modern version of Pan and Apollo? Tenacious D

*Archetype is the old stuff.

*Signature is your own insight

*What false idol brought snow-Pygmalion to life? John Madden

*Group 4- At the beginning there was the flood and at the end there was the flood.

*Group 5-How did John get away from the Cyclops? He said his name was No Man

*See film called “Dead Man”

*Group 6- What can be said about all ends? They are also beginnings

*In my end is my beginning.

* What are the odds one and three

*most memorial presentation- What two parts did Corrine say were about the same? The heart and the groin

*Tristan-Buddy visited Africa, they did not know the land. Oral and written knowledge were very different. They didn’t have written knowledge, they had oral traditions.  Animal like knowledge and myth knowledge

*In Jon Orsi’s final compare the writing process of? Loss of virginity

*James Joyce compares himself to what mythological personage? God

*Eating raw flesh of one dismembered is called what? Omophagia

*Read the afterword in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

*the last few chapters of Eliade. P 155  Focus: allegory, Xenophanes. Think about when reading M&R that we have returned to the beginning of class.

*M&R read p 199. Fairy tales, appendix

*Campbell in Hero of a thousand faces-the happy ending is a fairy tale. Message of myth(happily ever after)

*M&R p 172 Oral traditions, popular theology

*Myth does not deconstruct you faith, it reconstructs religion.

*p 172 Popular theology

*p 177 Children’s mythology- people that have blinded themselves to faith

*Finagins way

*Read blogs:  Corrine and Ashley and Sally

*Watch “into Gray silence”

*Am I a be-er or becomer

*Stripping yourself away to zero

*Write a summary of the class

*you are more than you think you are and you know more than you think you do. 

The Death of Achilles

The following was my mythical character story:

by James Hunter

Achilles was the son of the mortal Peleus and the Nereid Thetis. He was the mightiest of the Greeks who fought in the Trojan War, and was the hero of Homer's Iliad. Thetis attempted unsuccessfully to make her son immortal. There are two versions of the story. In the earlier version, Thetis anointed the infant with ambrosia and then placed him upon a fire to burn away his mortal portions; she was interrupted by Peleus, whereupon she abandoned both father and son in a rage. Peleus placed the child in the care of the Centaur Chiron, who raised and educated the boy. In the later version, she held the young Achilles by the heel and dipped him in the river Styx; everything the sacred waters touched became invulnerable, but the heel remained dry and therefore unprotected.
When Achilles was a boy, the seer Calchas prophesied that the city of Troy could not be taken without his help. Thetis knew that, if her son went to Troy, he would die an early death, so she sent him to the court of Lycomedes, in Scyros; there he was hidden, disguised as a young girl. During his stay he had an affair with Lycomedes' daughter, Deidameia, and she had a son, Pyrrhus (or Neoptolemus), by him. Achilles' disguise was finally penetrated by Odysseus, who placed arms and armor amidst a display of women's finery and seized upon Achilles when he was the only "maiden" to be fascinated by the swords and shields. Achilles then went willingly with Odysseus to Troy, leading a host of his father's Myrmidons and accompanied by his tutor Phoenix and his close friend Patroclus. At Troy, Achilles distinguished himself as an undefeatable warrior. Among his other exploits, he captured twenty-three towns in Trojan territory, including the town of Lyrnessos, where he took the woman Briseis as a war-prize. Later on Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, was forced by an oracle of Apollo to give up his own war-prize, the woman Chryseis, and took Briseis away from Achilles as compensation for his loss. This action sparked the central plot of the Iliad, for Achilles became enraged and refused to fight for the Greeks any further. The war went badly, and the Greeks offered handsome reparations to their greatest warrior; Achilles still refused to fight in person, but he agreed to allow his friend Patroclus to fight in his place, wearing his armor. The next day Patroclus was killed and stripped of the armor by the Trojan hero Hector, who mistook him for Achilles.

Achilles was overwhelmed with grief for his friend and rage at Hector. His mother obtained magnificent new armor for him from Hephaestus, and he returned to the fighting and killed Hector. He desecrated the body, dragging it behind his chariot before the walls of Troy, and refused to allow it to receive funeral rites. When Priam, the king of Troy and Hector's father, came secretly into the Greek camp to plead for the body, Achilles finally relented; in one of the most moving scenes of the Iliad, he received Priam graciously and allowed him to take the body away.
After the death of Hector, Achilles' days were numbered. He continued fighting heroically, killing many of the Trojans and their allies, including Memnon and the Amazon warrior Penthesilia. Finally Priam's son Paris (or Alexander), aided by Apollo, wounded Achilles in the heel with an arrow; Achilles died of the wound. After his death, it was decided to award Achilles' divinely-wrought armor to the bravest of the Greeks. Odysseus and Ajax competed for the prize, with each man making a speech explaining why he deserved the honor; Odysseus won, and Ajax then went mad and committed suicide.
During his lifetime, Achilles is also said to have had a number of romantic episodes. He reportedly fell in love with Penthesilia, the Amazon maiden whom he killed in battle, and it is claimed that he married Medea.

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Quiz 2 review

Lit 285 11/4/2010

*For test make sure you know ch 4 out of Eliade

*Look at Dustin’s Blog for test.

The golden bough is in: Eternal Darkness Nintendo game, Eureka 7 anime, Wicker Man, V for Vendetta

Religions of the Book”:

1.)What were the pierades? Magpies

2.)Separation, Initiation and return: the 3 cycles of the heroes

3.) Scylla-took purple hair from dad

4.)How did Daedelus trap the Minotaur? The Labyrinth

5.) How did Theseus find his way out of the Labyrinth? Twine from Ariadne

6.) What was on Europa’s basket? The story of Io’s abductions

7.)How did S outdo Ovid in grotesqueness? Levenia’s hands were cut off as well

8.)Mythological animal from Green Leaf? The Bull

9.)Where was Adonis struck by the boar? In the groin

(the fisher king was in a battle and was wounded in the groin.( T.S poem-the fisher king.))

10.)What mythic rule did Proserpina break? She ate a handful of pomegranates (for every seed she ate she had to spend that many months in the underworld)

11.)Why are there seasons?  Proserpina ate while in the Underworld

12.)In Camus and Harmony, what are the 3 stages? I conviviality ii rape  iii indifference

13.)One of the few stories in Ovid with a happy ending? Pygmalion (he craved a woman out of stone)

14.)T.S. elate- we shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be the arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

15.) Dr. Sexson believes that in Ovid, the task of the artist is not to represent nature but to alter nature.

16.) What was the central difference between Arachne’s and Minerva’s tapestry? Minerva’s displayed the “state sponsored art” Arachne weaved the gods as invasive criminals.

17.)According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, how did Hercules die? Chunks of flesh. (the shirt)

18.) What did Venus turn Adonoses blood into? Anemone flower

19.) According to Homer’s Odyssey, why do we suffer? So poets have something to write about.

20.)  Ekphrasis: is comparing one art form to another

21.) Kristen and tom are Corrine’s parents

22.) “The Imagination must have a local habitation and a name”

23.) Who was the wife of Hercules who received the shirt of Flame? Deianira

24.) What is the origin of the horn of plenty? Hercules toe from the bulls head (Achelous)

25.) Nessus- what is the name of the centaur that abducted Hercule’s wife

26.) What does sleep in Eliade represent? Amnesia and imprisonment

27.) What was the fate of Icharus’ son? (To end up in a painting) fell out of the sky and drowned

28.) According to Eliade, what does catharsis mean? Releasing

29.) Look at Sari albee, Johns, Marys, blog (Sari’s blog has great notes)

30.) book 15 of Ovid

Last words of Ovid- I shale have life

A Look at Ch 4 In Myth and Reality

"When, as sometimes happens, a lad dies from the effect of the operation, he is buried secretly in the forest, and his sorrowing mother is told that the monster has a pig's stomach as well as a human stomach, and that unfortunately her son slipped into the wrong stomach, from which it was impossible to extricate."

When we think of the end, every person has a different take on what that word means.  Is it a word of something final or is it a word of beginnings? When looking at some cultures, death is a new beginning and a step to a future world. In other cultures or religious beliefs, the end is the end.  Forming ideas on what the end means comes from you own experiences and the stories and people that have an influence on you.  So looking at what the end means to you, is it you ending or your beginning?