9/20/11

“No sooner have you grabbed hold of it than myth opens out into a fan of a thousand segments. Here the variant is the origin. Everything that happens, happens this way, or that way, or this other way. And in each of these diverging stories all the others are reflected, all brush by us like folds of the same cloth. If, out of some perversity of tradition, only one version of some mythical event has come down to us, it is like a body without a shadow, and we must do our best to trace out that invisible shadow in our minds” (pg. 147-148 Cadmus).

Maybe this quote explains how all stories written about a certain person or event turns out to be about the same thing. All the stories told by different people about the same event are different only because people interpret things or events differently. That’s what is great about hearing the same story retold by different people. People emphasize a certain detail more in a story than someone else might, because people have different feelings about different things, and maybe one person feels something is important to the story when someone else might think a different detail is even more important. The different story tellers’ interpretations of the actual event have different details. For example, some say Helen was the cause of the Trojan War and that she was there in Troy, but someone else says that she wasn’t actually there; it was only her phantom, and the real Helen was off somewhere else doing something else. We don’t know what actually happened or what is the truth, we can only decide for ourselves. There are so many parts that make up a single story, that it is no wonder each story that is told is slightly different from the next. People interpret things differently in certain situations because in those different situations a person can be affected by something when someone else might be affected by something totally different. By putting all the stories about the same event written by different people into one big story, gives the reader more than one interpretation. This allows the audience to choose for them selves what they think might have happened. 

Class Notes:

• The last creation story that was told was The Creation of the World.
• A change of style is a change of subject.
• The first music was written about the muses.
• Life = pain and suffering
• To Be- how do things come into being? "To be or not to be?" -Hamlet
• Ontology is he philosophical study of the nature of being and existing. What does it mean to be? simple and complex
• Freud- interpreting the ancient myths (psychologist) 

At the beginning everything is together, everything is perfect. The transition from togetherness to separation is a painful process. A person is born and moves from togetherness to a world filled with suffering and brokenness. Lastly, a person moves to the transformation stage where they recreate the beginning by imagination.

• Separation- Beginning
• Initiation- Middle
• Transformation- End

• The first stage, when a person enters the world, is very traumatic

We were asked to tell a story of one of our first memories.

 I guess one memory I can think of was when I was about 3 or 4. I was pushing some type of cart down the side walk, I think I was running away from home, but my mom caught up to me and I tried running away. She told me not to run because I might trip and fall. So what did I do? I ran, and then I tripped and fell face first into sidewalk. I got a pretty nice fat lip from the fall. My mom took me home and then gave me a popsicle to ameliorate my fat lip. The fall was definitely worth it.

Rainbow Popsicles!