last night I attended the birthday party for The King James Bible, and The Tempest. First of all, happy birthday! to two wonderful pieces of literature. Secondly I would like to commend the performance of our own educator Dr. Sexson, as well as all of the other performer, who did a fantastic job of making the whole piece as entertaining as it was informative. Man, those people can all sing like champions. The scripting for the event was very well done, and though I'm not sure who exactly pieced that together, that person, or persons, deserves a bit of recognition, because I was both laughing, and rubbing my chin in deep thought pretty much the whole time. The cake (which I'm sure is what most people reading this are curious about) was also quite good. Even though my first piece of the bible was white cake with vanilla frosting, it was exceptionally moist, and really melted in my mouth. My second piece of cake was of the tempest, and luckily there was some chocolate to this one. It was equal in all ways to the bible cake, splendid. There was also some cider that was great, so thanks to whomever it was that brought all of those delicious treats! If you missed the event, I must say, you truly did miss out on something. Good food, good people, and good entertainment; all things made for a most enjoyable evening.

My Final Paper

“Raising” questions about mythology

            Parents: they bring people and gods alike into the world, and unfortunately for many mythological characters, they occasionally try to take them out of it as well. A life threatening conflict between parent and child certainly serves to make a tale very dramatic, but for all of its excitement, and entertainment value, it often seems to end (or rather, never seems to end) in a perpetuation of the violence that sparked the conflict.

            The cyclical nature of the universe is not something mysterious, or unseen, but there does seem to be a strange force protecting this fragile loop. This force is the force of habit. It is comfort; the comfort of turning what has been into what will be again, that stays man from breaking the mold. It is knowing, reciting, and then living our myth that makes these tragic stories truly “the precedent behind every action.” (Calasso 383) It persists in the same way it began; with a father or mother who only wants power; with a child who will do anything to take their power away; and with an evolution, of a child who becomes a parent. The whole pattern of events, from Uranus down to modern times, has remained essentially the same.

            We will begin in ilo tempore, or simply, “in the beginning,” with the story of Kronos and his father Uranus. Uranus, the Sky, was the father of many powerful beings in Greek mythology. Among them were the Hundred Handed Ones, who each possessed 100 brutishly muscular arms, and 50 heads; The Cyclopes, who were alike the Gods in every way, save for their single eye; Echidna, the mother of most of Greece’s monsters; and finally, and surely most importantly, The Titans. There were many Titans, and all of them possessed tremendous strength, so Uranus, wanting with all his being to remain the supreme power, began to hide them all away inside the Earth’s great caverns. Earth, Gaia, the mother of all Sky’s children, devised a plan to exact a cruel, but fitting punishment on Sky: “Without delay she created the element of grey adamant, and made a great reaping-hook, and showed it to her children.

            “’Children of mine and of an evil father, I wonder whether you would like to do as I say?” (Hesiod’s Theogony) This line portends millennium after millennium of the primitive philosophy of fighting fire with fire, as they say. This question has opened the door, not just to exacting a violent punishment for a violent crime, but for perpetuation of any crime. Ever hear the expression “An eye for an eye?” This question is the grey adamant, created by Gaia, it is the metal, the virtue, from which is shaped the follow up statement; the ever dreadful “reaping-hook.” “We could get redress for your father’s cruelty,” Said great Gaia, “After all, he was the one who started using violence!” There should be no doubt as to who is to blame for the crime of child abuse, but who is responsible for its continuation? It is just as much Gaia as Uranus, but then, is Kronos not also to blame? When all of Gaia’s other children cower at the thought of fighting with their father, Kronos alone stands up to be the “liberator” of his siblings, and so in liberating himself, he has locked mankind in a cycle of familial violence. “'Mother, I am willing to undertake and carry through your plan. I have no respect for our infamous father, since he was the one who started using violence.'” And Kronos did as he promised.

            This is a strange tale, certainly, but standing alone, it does not explain why child abuse tends to be a pattern in families, even in modern days. It fails to demonstrate the psychology of it as is, but when paired with the story of Kronos and Zeus, everything becomes clearer.

            Kronos, after claiming his father’s place as the most powerful of the deities, began to have children of his own by the Titaness Rhea. It was only once he had put himself in his father’s shoes that he saw clearly the reasons for Uranus’ wicked actions. Only once he was seated upon the throne at Olympus, did he realize how precarious that perch was. But Rhea was not the Earth. There was no way to hide the children he was fathering inside of her, so instead he hid them inside himself. He ate them. The abused son became the abusive father, not necessarily because it seemed like the best idea, but because it was the only behavior he knew, and he was not the ingenious type. One by one, he swallowed his children, in order to avoid being overcome by them. But Rhea had to be cleverer than Gaia. Her children weren’t around long enough to castrate their father with a sickle, so she had to hide one away until it was strong enough to battle for the throne. This lucky child was Zeus. Rhea stashed her baby away in a cave, (the precedent behind stashing wondrous treasures in caves perhaps?) and there, Zeus grew. Meanwhile, Rhea presented Kronos with a baby shaped rock, wrapped in cloth, which he swallowed whole, just like he had with all of his children, and there the rock rested, in the pit of his stomach, until the day the real Zeus would come, and strike his evil father down.

            So it was written, so is hath been. Zeus grew strong within the cave, and one day he emerged, a most comely, and powerful god. The full story of the battle of Zeus and Kronos is much too long to tell, but in the abridged version, Rhea beguiles her husband into accepting Zeus as an Olympian, to be his cupbearer. Zeus then gives Kronos a special drink, which causes him to vomit up all of the children he had previously swallowed whole, and they joined Zeus in a tremendous battle against the Titans, which ended with the Olympian God’s claiming their thrones, and a new order being established. (Hunt) But what was it that made this new order so different from the old? What was it about Zeus that allowed him to break the pattern of damaged children becoming bad fathers? When examined closely, there are a couple details that stand out as being different. In the Story of Kronos and Uranus, it is not only the father, but also the mother who is violent, even though they are oppositely so. Therefore, Kronos is given only negative examples of how to parent. In the myth of Zeus and Kronos, Rhea simply hides Zeus away to be raised by nymphs, which was apparently the ancient version of foster parenting. Then one nymph, Metis (Wisdom), prepares a special drink for Zeus to give to his father, which makes him vomit up all of his swallowed children. It is then Zeus who decides that a battle must be fought, and it is not only Zeus and Kronos, but all of the Olympians and Titans who fight. And so there is no singular point of guilt for violent action, but rather the behavior, and therefore the blame, is dispersed. This war de-emphasized the importance of a father/son conflict, and created instead, a conflict based on the principal of freedom. It is the notion of freedom, and the aid of Wisdom that makes Zeus the exception, allowing him to temporarily break the loop. But as long as there is myth, stories trickle down, and precipitate a reenactment of their contents. So it hath been, so it shall be.

            Tantalus was a very rich king and a very powerful king indeed. Some even believed he was Zeus’ own son. So despite the fact that he was an annoyance to everyone who knew him, Zeus continued to invite him to feast with the gods on Olympus. One day, Tantalus opened up his own humble palace to the gods, and decided to serve them a very rare meal indeed; his own son, Pelops. (Calasso 177) In this story we have several pieces of the myth of Zeus and Kronos. We have a powerful king, eating his son to stay in power. Make no mistake, just because Pelops wasn’t about to kill Tantalus and steal his kingdom does not mean that this wasn’t about power. Tantalus wanted to stay in favor with the gods, which is a greater power than any mortal can create for himself, so he tried to do so by feeding his own son to Zeus, the god who does not eat children. Again, Zeus refused to eat the son. Instead Zeus and the other gods pieced Pelops back together, and where Demeter had accidentally eaten a piece of his shoulder while lamenting the loss of her own daughter, there was a new shoulder blade, made of sparkling ivory. The gods marveled at how beautiful this boy was, and again it was Rhea who preserved the son, and the order of good nature, by breathing life into the reassembled Pelops. Pelops was whisked away to be a cupbearer on Olympus, just as Zeus had been before him, but he was the cupbearer of Zeus’ brother, Poseidon; and their relationship was one of love, not of calculating malice. So again, we see here a cycle. Surely the cycle has been transformed, but it is nonetheless, still a cycle that has not been broken, only tweaked.

            The story of Pelops’ family does not end there, but rather epitomizes the cyclical nature of bad parenting in the mythological world. The family continues to kill within itself, and yet still refuses to die, all the way down to Orestes. But what of Orestes? What is special about him? To fully understand, we must follow Pelops’ lineage a few more generations. First, Pelops begot many sons, two of whom play major roles in the cycle. These two sons were Thyestes, and Atreus, whose mother had a very familiar request of them. She told them that their father had not been fair, that he favored their bastard brother over them, and that they should use violence to solve their problems. So again we see the mother ask the question, “Children of mine and of an evil father, I wonder whether you would like to do as I say…?” The new Gaia, Hippodameia, suggested that they kill their half brother, Chrysippus, so that one of her own sons may claim the power. Again, perhaps the details have changed, but in the precipitating events, it is the request of the mother using violence that causes the acts to persist in the next generation. After the deed was done, it was unclear who would get to rule over Pelops’ lands once the king had died, so the two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, began to feud. To quote Brandon Boyd, “success is a devilish opiate…” Once Atreus had already established his success; once he already had the upper hand in his conflict with Thyestes, he invites Thyestes to a banquet, where one can guess, based on the story of Tantalus and Pelops, what is to be served. Thyestes’ own children were bubbling away in the pot, and though they were not Atreus’ sons, they were, nonetheless, children in his family. The conflict has many other examples of bad parenting, but in order to get to the end of the cycle we must look at one of Atreus’ sons, or rather, one of Thyestes’ sons, whom Atreus believes to be one of his own, Agamemnon. Agamemnon needed to get to Troy, and had only one way to do it; sacrifice a virgin. Who did he choose? His own Daughter. His grandmother orders the death of her step son, his father, Atreus, kills and eats all of Agamemnon’s cousins (who were really his half brothers and sisters), his true father, Thyestes, rapes his own daughter, and now Agamemnon slits the throat of his daughter, Iphigenia, sacrificing her to the gods, so that he may bring death to the foot of the great walls of Ilius. The virgin’s mother, Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra, has the mind to avenge her daughter, and so she fashions a reaping hook of her own design, and the mother’s violent intentions will lead the next generation, her son Orestes, to violence once again.

            As the great wheel of bad parenting turns, Clytemnestra sits on Agamemnon’s throne, while Agamemnon lies dead on the floor. She has just killed her husband, with the help of her lover Aegisthus, who is the product of Thyestes raping his own daughter, Pelopia, and so, as Roberto Calasso so eloquently states, “The blood flows from Thyestes, at the hand of Thyestes, from one son of Thyestes, at the hands of another son of Thyestes.” (Calasso 188). And as a result of Clytemnestra, and Aegisthus’ violent actions, Orestes comes in, and kills them both; his own mother, and his own uncle. And so, we are back to Kronos killing Uranus. And as has been the case this whole time, the players are rearranged, but the game is still exactly the same: parent is abusive, or violent in some way, and child kills parent. But without Metis around, without wisdom, how can Orestes break this cycle which has been his curse; handed down to him from his father, and from his father’s father, all the way back to his father’s father’s father’s father, Tantalus? Luckily for Orestes, Metis has been preserved in the strangest of ways.

            Although Zeus avoided making the same mistakes as his father, that is, he avoided eating his own children, he did eat the mother of his child. Once Zeus had paired with Metis, he was compelled to ingest her, in order to keep his own children from uprooting him from his throne, (sound familiar? Even when he seemingly breaks the cycle, Zeus ends up preserving it). So he ate Metis, who was with child at the time, and this child was Athena. It would appear to all on Olympus, that Zeus had fathered Athena by himself, from his own head. Funny, the daughter of Wisdom comes from the head of the god, not the hand; from his source of intentions, not his source of actions. And so it is that Metis, Wisdom, lives on in Athena. Athena, daughter of Wisdom, is the one who finally helps Orestes to end the cycle of familial violence in the family of Pelops, when she acquits him for the murder of his mother. So it is that the key to breaking a harmful cycle has always been, and will always be, wisdom.

            Every parent has a choice to make, about how to raise their children, but for either road they take, myth has already been there, laying the bricks for millennia. Each caregiver chooses which road they would like to take, and each choice provides a separate destiny for generations to come. Nowadays we don’t say that a parent has chosen the road of Uranus, we say that they are abusive, and we swoop in like Rhea, to whisk the victimized children away to the path of Zeus, but it is all too often that these stories end up taking the path of Kronos, and for all our best efforts, we must wait at least one more generation before Wisdom presents herself in whatever fashion, and a child is raised in a way that will break the cycle, for at least one more family.

Sources Cited

Boyd, Brandon Charles. "If Not Now, When?...From Brandon." Incubus World Headquarters.

Incubus, 14 Apr. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. <http://www.enjoyincubus.com/us/news/if-not-now-when-brandon>.

Calasso, Roberto. The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Print.

Eliade, Mircea. From Primitives to Zen. N.p.: Nebulous Cargo Productions, 1996. N. pag. From

Primitives to Zen. Web. 4 Dec. 2011. <http://www.mircea-eliade.com/from-primitives-to-zen/>.

*"Family Tree of the Greek gods." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. WIkipedia, 13 Sept. 2011.

Web. 4 Dec. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_the_Greek_gods>.

Hunt, J. M. "Creation of the World." Greek Mythology Story Creation of the World. N.p., n.d.

Web. 4 Dec. 2011. <http://www.desy.de/gna/interpedia/greek_myth/creation.html>.

West, M. L. Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days. Oxford, NY: Oxford World's  Classics,

2008. Print.

*NOTE: The Family Tree of the Greek Gods, although not specifically referenced in the paper, was used as a resource for fact checking, more than anything else. 

myth presentation

Perhaps this family tree will help y'all to follow some of the happenings in the cycle of events mentioned in this paper

         On page 626 of my copy of The Magus (which is the copy that the book store sold, for those of you who are wondering if it is the same pagination as your own book), Lily de Seitas tells Nicholas "Every answer is a kind of death," which, in my humble opinion, justifies the ending of the book entirely, making it perhaps the most important quote in the entire book, certainly top three if nothing else. See, if there had been a more definite ending (that is, if it had told us what happened with Nicholas and Alison, or with Conchis, and the next year's godgame) then the entire world that the novel created has an ending, and it is dead, like the Latin language. The way the book ends keeps the characters alive in the reader's mind. Instead of wondering about what happened to the characters after this last moment as if it were some past event that history recorded, which could be looked up, and recounted, I felt as though I was wondering what the characters were doing at this moment, in 2011, and how they were fairing after this whole "godgame" business. That is the power of this quote. Instead of providing a moment in which the godgame is clearly finished, and the relationship between Alison and Nicholas takes a definite route, in one direction or another, the moment, the situation is left in the open for us to ponder. It's not as though the author were preserving the last moment, as if it were the flower under the bell jar (Beauty and the Beast reference) never to die because it was frozen in time; rather, the immortality comes from the fact that the moment was fleeting, it was only one small part of a series of moments that comprised this interaction, and it was presented as such; as though what happened next truly happened next, but was none of our concern. Fowles planted a seed in those last moments, which may have bloomed any type of flora, and it was left up to each reader to decide what that seed would produce, and to come back to that seed later on, and examine it. It was never meant to be appreciated right away. Just as one cannot appreciate a garden until the flowers start to blossom.
             Does the last quote not make what happens next obvious? No. Who is to say whether or not any of these characters have loved? Who is it that truly needs the chance to love tomorrow for the first time? And furthermore, assuming (as I, and I'm sure most people did) that the target of the quote was Nicholas, who knows whether or not his next chance at love will be with Alison? Nobody (I would guess that even Mr. Fowles never knew, because it was never the important thing). 
             I would've rather not posted any of this in all honesty, because anyone who didn't consciously realize this for his or her self, probably did have the same feeling, but didn't realize it, and sooner or later they certainly would have realized it, and understood, and they would have grown to love the book for its lessons in time. But as it stands, I've quite possibly ruined this little piece of self realization for the people who fall into this category (if any in the class do), and I've cheated them out of ever being able to love this novel as much as I do. Much like Nicholas himself, the reader is driven to certain self-realizations, upon finishing the book, which offer a very gratifying sense of introspective knowledge. In other words: sorry if you didn't like the book, and you feel as though you already understood the gravity of this quote, because chances are that you understood the quote, but didn't fully appreciate it's weight, and now I've spoiled everything even further for you. I think that this miniature "life lesson-ette" is more what the quote is about than the actual literal significance of the words themselves, and so, by explaining the quote, I've actually taken away it's true meaning, so that it can never fully be explained, unless one already understood it entirely in the first place. Bummer.

I just finished The Magus, and I don't understand why everyone gets so upset about the ending. What more would you have asked for?...

            I've gotten through 496 pages of The Magus, and I cannot get over the way in which this book has constructed a total mind-maze! I mean, usually it's incredibly easy to see through a book's plot; to end up where you suspected you would end up, even though your resolve in your initial intuition may have been shaken a bit from time to time. But this book is different. It's different because, even if you know what is going to happen, you never know how much is laid out for you to see through, and you never know how much deeper each little vein of the plot really goes. Just like Nicholas in Conchis' masque. It's really very well constructed for that reason; it puts the reader in the situation of the main character, and not just because of the first person perspective, nor simply because you have a mystery to figure out along with the character, but because you too must feel the indignant sting of having been wrong in a conclusion, and you too must feel betrayed every time Nicholas feels betrayed, and because you are forced to sympathize with a man who you do not want to admit is really quite similar to yourself in many ways. Am I assuming too much about your personality? I should think not. Nicholas is like all young people I know, my friends, my "enemies", and my self. I say so because he starts out with too much confidence in what he wants to do (this is not everyone, but it is one large group of people), then he realizes that he detests the conditions he's in (change of major?) and decides to pursue something a bit different, thought I will admit, going to Greece is not quite the same as switching from a pre-med major to an anthropology major, or something of the like. Nicholas also has a relationship that he isn't fully invested in, but that tugs at his heart strings a bit every time he's getting a little lonely (at first anyhow). This is kind of a slap in the face for some people, who would think "Oh, I've never been nearly such a pig!", but just give it some thought. Maybe our cases haven't been nearly so extreme as the relationship between Alison and Nicholas, and maybe we've even resisted the urge to use somebody to temporarily patch up a hole in our lives until we've found something better, but we've all had that little thought. Even if it was just the shade of a notion that you labeled as a demon right away, Dionysus has possessed you for one or more seconds at some point in time and said, "Maybe, just for a night or two, you could..."
             Anyhow, I would hate to sympathize with a character I don't much like any longer. But how could I avoid talking about what seems to be the ultimate betrayal against him? Alison is dead, and proven (in his mind) to be so, and yet "Julie/Lily" still makes love to him with apparent amour, only for us to see that it's truly been done with the callous of a hooker! If you don't feel bad for the man at that point, you're even more hard hearted than he had ever been toward Alison. Elle ne l'aime pas du tout! The poor sap. But now, truly, I am done sympathizing with this man.
             I have postulated theory upon theory about what might be happening. Most of them have become rubble strewn at the base of my final plausible conclusion to the book (which I can't possibly write in my blog, just in case people are not so far into the book), but I will say this. If the pattern of my theorizing continues, in two or three chapters, my final plausible theory will be in the same state as all my others. In fact, I wouldn't hardly claim this theory out loud if someone asked me, because it is so outlandish, but only because everything which is not outlandish is refuted the page after it is conceived. And furthermore, the book has a way of making you doubt your own sanity to a degree, or rather, I think I might known what happens, but the book doesn't particularly suggest it, so I feel the characters of the book staring at me through the pages saying "that's what you think is going to happen? No way man, you're miles off." And since I can't get my footing on what may or may not happen next, I have to accept the roll of Nicholas, of the bystander who cannot escape the masque, and so must let its natural current whisk him along, until finally, battered and bruised I have reached the natural conclusion. And the foreboding notion that everyone hates the end of this book certainly doesn't assuage the feeling I have that the natural end to this current is something analogous to a waterfall.
                 I also feel almost like a character who has made it yea far in the masque, because when I hear which page others are on, all I can do is smile and think "have fun", and then laugh to myself in that menacing chuckle that denotes some sort of dramatic irony. In other words, I am the ancient stone bust on Conchis' silver platter, and I have that wry smile that you cannot decode any more than you can escape it. So, to all of you who are not so far into the book, have fun.

            So I went to the presentation on The King James Bible, and The Lotus-Sutra the other night, and something they said sort of reminded me of a quote from The Magus. I can't remember the exact phrasing, or even the approximate page number in the book, but it was something to the effect of (and mind you, I'm paraphrasing) Do you think the novel is dead as an art form? It was something that Nicholas used to joke about with his friends at university, and Conchis brought up the memory by saying he hated fiction, and had burned all of his novels. Anyway, one of the two gents presenting was talking about how it was the end of the printed era, and how the scripture was sort of having its super nova event, where it shines brightest just before it dies out. So I was thinking (and was considering asking the men), how is scripture any different from myth? In fact, I feel like it's probably pretty obvious to most people that scripture is mythology (whether you believe or not, it is in either  case, mythology, a true story). So if scripture is on its last leg, does that mean that all of mythology is? It was sort of a curious thing that this was brought up briefly in class today. But more importantly than simply recognizing that the age of the novel, of the written, printed story, is at an end, is identifying the reason. Why does nobody seem to want to buy books anymore? I think most of us will agree that sitting in front of a computer screen doing homework is no more enjoyable than reading a book. At any rate a book doesn't have that terrible back lighting that can give one headaches after a couple hours. And frankly, do you realize the number of books you would need to have on a kindle to see a return in your investment of $139.99? It's all a bit absurd, really. Anyway, this is more of a fuel for the fire entry, because I would love to hear some input on the decline of the printed text, if anyone cares to share, because I do find it to be an important issue. The loss of print as a media affects many areas of society, socioeconomically as well as aesthetically, so perhaps in class people will weigh in on the subject, or on their own blogs, but the important thing is to just think about it for yourself. I, personally, can think of very few things as comfortable as sitting down with a cup of coffee and a book on a cold, grey morning, so what the hell is everybody else doing while I'm reading? Also perhaps consider how a decline in the physical printed text could change the way people write/speak. Would there be a subsequent decline in all aspects of the language? Would there be any art left to it? certainly there would be people who wrote for the aesthetic purposes, despite the fact that it would no longer be a lucrative career in any way, but we could lose all ability to create new works of genius. How many people read a blog entry compared to the number that read a book? It could take a seriously Sci-Fi turn from there. I would assume it would be a long time before anything as crazy as that would happen, but even when I'm an old, old man, I would rather not see it be so.

            I feel I should also mention, with regards to the Deal/Beal presentation, that the whole thing was really quite interesting, and I would recommend going to the 400th "birthday party" for The King James Bible, and The Tempest. By the way, the mint brownies after the presentation were delicious.