Lecture 2: A Lecture in Two Parts

1. myths: not necessarily untruth

In Lecture 1 we looked at mythology and science--two different stories that attempt to make sense of life, the universe, and everything.

Without belaboring the point, I want to quickly restate something that I'm sure will raise objections: mythology is not necessarily untruth (at least not entirely untrue); science is not necessarily truth (at least not the entire truth).

I am not anti-science; in fact, I was a math/science major up through the middle of my college career; I'm especially fond of physics. Still, I certainly do not blindly accept scientific fact as absolute. In a book called How Nature Works Per Bak noted the lack of open-mindedness that is sometimes found in the scientific community:

I once raised this issue among a group, not of geophysicists, but of cosmologists at a high table dinner at the Churchill College in Cambridge. "Why is it that you guys are so conservative in your views, in the face of the almost complete lack of understanding of what is going on in your field?" I asked. The answer was as simple as it was surprising. "If we don't accept some common picture of the universe, however unsupported by the facts, there would be nothing to bind us together as a scientific community. Since it is unlikely that any picture that we use will be falsified in our lifetime, one theory is as good as any other." The explanation was social, not scientific. (86)

I doubt all scientists would agree with the above statement, but science is really about creating models based on observations. The model is valid until someone finds a model that more accurately fits new observations; hence, the heliocentric notion of our system which got Gallileo into so much hot water eventually HAD to replace the geocentric model. By the way, a quick read of Ovid's creation myth shows that the ancient Greeks and Romans already knew a great deal about what scientists now teach; much of that knowledge was lost or suppressed in the dark and middle ages.

Mythology--systems of belief not supportable by the scientific method--is a blend of primative science (observation), exaggeration, legend, imagination, symbol presented in the form of stories. The stories are attempts to make sense of the unknown. Why, for example, do some flowers have heart-shaped centers? What accounts for all of the eye designs on the tail of the peacock (again, read Ovid for an answer). If a world is designed by a benevolant creator, what accounts for cruelty, pain, suffering, hunger, labor (both kinds), murder? Why do people speak different languages? What is the meaning of a rainbow?

Some of the answers can now be explained with tools (light refraction); others really can not (suffering).

In any case, the myth makers used the known (fire, a chariot) and applied them to the unknown (sun crossing the sky) to try to make sense out of their world, to create order and security from chaos and fear. And these stories passed from generation to generation, place to place, changing with the storytellers and with new conditions and new discoveries.

What's amazing is that with all of the differences, there are consistent patterns in most myth systems. Suffering, for example, comes about when people tamper with things reserved for God or gods or goddesses (knowledge of good and evil in the Adam and Eve story, acquisition of fire by Prometheus which leads to the temptation of Pandora, trusting the dog to protect creation in the Ulgen the Creator, building a tower that reaches toward heaven in The Tower of Babel).

This is a good spot to look at the objection raised against the treatment of women in myths / religions. Eve gets the blame! Pandora gets the blame! Some man wrote that to make women look bad.

Possibly.

The stories many of us are most familiar with do have women being tempted. There are other myths (like Ulgen) where men or lesser animals are weak. In nearly each case it's a temptor, not the tempted, who is the villain. And Adam and Epimetheus don't come off looking brilliant in their two stories.

Nevertheless, myths do offer us a lens through which we can view cultures--their beliefs, their likes and dislikes, their values. The can also be used to shape values (a woman did it!). But that is subject to interpretation.

There is another way of viewing and interpreting the myths (more of this will be explored in Lecture 3). The myths really do parallel human experience; the ancient and supernatural characters are larger than life, but the patterns of existence mirror our own.

The expulsion from an Edenic existence (of a cozy place where everything is supplied, where all needs are met for us) is something we all experience. We go from the womb (literally, then being nurtured, cleaned, protected through infancy). Eventually, we get a sense of independence--call it a will if you wish. We make decisions for ourselves (some better than others!); we have our own tastes (some more costly than others). We get to drive around in a car, but with a price. We pay insurance, deal with needed repairs, are responsible for traffic violations. So mom gave us life and nurtured us, but once we finished college and held down a job and found our own families we had to leave. Is the Eve / Pandora story resentment at HAVING to grow up?

It's a different way of approaching myths, but it is consistent with the purpose of these earliest stories--to make the life, the universe, and everything make sense to people, to put the unknown things in the world in a context that fits the known things.

You are welcome to take myths literally. They don't have as much connection with our lives and the lives of the storytellers, but you are, after all, independent :)

2. writing about literature

an important note:

on to the process!

The first, and many feel most difficult, task is to find something to write about.

You may be used to reading a story and writing a summary or a bit about the author or a review (thumbs up /thumbs down), but that will not do for this class; this is a class in literary analysis. That means you need to look at some significant idea or issue or theme or technique (I'd not recommend looking at technical elements of style unless you've got some solid background in analyzing fiction) of the work. Yes, I understand that this is a lot harder than just writing a plot summary, but analysis requires you to show your thinking (not your likes/dislikes) about a subject, your ability to find substance and thought in what you read. Analyzing a children's novel is the same task as analyzing Shakespeare's The Tempest or Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. You will need to develop a thesis, which means you will need some point to argue and support.

A thesis USUALLY is developed as an answer to a series of questions you ask about the work (in this case, the book). After reading Oedipus the King you might wonder:

1. In what way is this character heroic when he is clearly self-destructive and has character traits (arrogance, rashness) that are not typically heroic?

2. How can the play be viewed as tragic when fate (and the gods and goddesses) play such a major role in Oedipus's downfall?

Both of these questions are excellent because they look at ideas that almost demand answers which are open to interpretation; they are not simple fact questions (such as what is the name of the blind prophet in the play), and the answers will require looking at various parts of the novel for support. They require explanation, are open to debate, must be expanded on--all what you will need to develop a four-full-page (minimum) essay.

Here's the next step: look for answers to your questions; look for patterns in the book; eventually you should find some single area you can explore in a paper. Your thesis might be, for example,

One of the chief conflicts in Sophocles's Oedipus the King is the battle between the human intellect and divine prophesy; the play suggests that for the Greeks fate and the will of the gods and goddesses was much more powerful than the individual.

Yes, this is a long sentence. You WANT a long and very-specific (focused) sentence that clearly states an idea that (and here I'll repeat myself) requires explanation and expansion, that requires examples from the book, play, poem for support. The thesis does something else; it determines what will or will not be in your paper. For example, a long discussion of the origin of Oedipus's name has nothing to do with this thesis and does not belong in your paper. Looking at Oedipus trying to avoid killing the man he believes is his father and marrying the woman he believes is his mother by running away from home, however, does fit this thesis because it's an example of an individual trying to thwart "fate and the will of the gods and goddesses."

So at this point you can consider what bits of the book relate to your argument (notice that a thesis is an argument; it's a claim that something very specific it being suggested by the book). You can/should go back through the book and note passages that you will want to quote as you develop your paper on this one key idea. I hope you take good notes when you read the works :)

With a little research you can discover that Sophocles wrote the play, in part, as an attack on the atomists and sophists whose ideas were finding favor in Athens in the 5th century B.C. Faith in reason and scientific discovery were replacing the traditional religious values of Sophocles and earlier generations. There are several scene in Oedipus the King where Oedipus and Jocasta dismiss prophesy and fate and depend on human intellect. After all, Oedipus uses his intellect to avoid the prophesy he's overheard that he's doomed to murder his father and marry his mother. His wit and reasoning also allow him to solve the ancient riddle of the sphinx, to free Thebes, to win the kingship and marriage to the queen. Of course we realize the dramatic irony of the situation (we are aware that his reasonable attempts to avoid his fate have actually caused the prophesy to come true). He and Jocasta do not initially have that awareness; instead, they are constantly trying to bolster one another by relying on intellect and logic.

After you build up a healthy list of examples which support your thesis, you'll craft your essay using the observation-quotation-explanation method; in essence, you will make some statements (your observations), back them up with examples (documented quotations from the text), and discuss how they develop your thesis (explain them in relation to the point of the paragraph or to the point of your essay as a whole). Here's an example:

Mainly, you want to stay away from simple biography and plot summary. You are trying to look for ideas and issues in the works you read. The days of book reports are long past.

And do make sure they are your ideas and observations. Do not use SparkNotes or LitCharts or ChatGPT to read and think for you. If there is some reason to quote an outside source (in addition to the work you are writing about, then you will want to also have an MLA 9 format Works Cited, but these papers really will not often require that.

Following is a link to an excerpt from a student paper in the B+/A- range. It is not technically perfect, but it is a clear. focused analysis of a single idea in a novel, and it is supported with lots of documented quotations from the play Lysistrata (this was for Writing Assignment 2). Take a look so that you have another idea of what analysis is all about:

2 1/2: creative writing

SPECIAL NOTE: in this class you will also have some creative options. In those cases (if you do choose them) things like paper length will be the same, and you generally want to do MLA 9 format, though if you are writing something like a play, you will want to try play format (ask questions if you have them).

The creative options are just that--options. If you want to try something different and invent rather than quote/cite from an existing work, it's there for you :)