Egypt Summerall
Sep 6, 2018 · 7 min read

Understanding Classic Mythology and Myths

Tuesday 9/4 (11:10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.)

My first day in Classic Mythology was quite interesting than I had anticipated. The class started out with a question “How do we experience/participate in stories and myths (beyond just hearing reading, and seeing them)”? The first topic for this question that we started out with was Easter, so referring back to the question that was posed, the class gave personal background experiences that they have experienced or seen. Some of the things that we attached to Easter was: dinner (certain types of food), Church plays of the death and resurrection of Christ, that its seasonal (spring and colorful), rituals that are done in the church on this particular day, and the Easter bunny (including the egg hunt). All these things that we just attach to this once particular event each year, show how much social bonding we do with family and others. There was topics like Thanksgiving, Star Wars, and The Trojan War Cycle that we talked about and how we attach these myths into our life rituals. My after thoughts about the class discussion was how much more you really can understand some of the rituals that people choose to engage themselves in. For example, when we talked about the Star Wars and the different approaches that people take to engage themselves in, go to show just how more insightful the discussion was. People spending time and money to dress up as their favor actor or actress and attending the big Star Wars convention on May 4, with thousands of people coming from all over is something else. And that May 4 has a meaning behind it (may the force be with you) as to why they have it on that particular day. I definitely, think that this class will allow me to look at things on more broad scale outside of what I think is right/wrong, or even just my personal rituals that I choose to partake in.

Sunday 9/2 (2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.)

I began to read pages 3–19 in our book. Because the first chapter of the book is the introduction chapter. The book is very slow, and you have to really focus on what you are reading. Because this past weekend was Labor Day as well as being Sunday, I had to study at home in my bedroom. Now, for me I study best in a silence environment with no distractions. Because I did study from home, I had people constantly interrupting me with their problems. A friend from back home (I’m from Knoxville, Tennessee) was having relationship issue. She called me telling me about this guy that she has been seen for almost a year now, and how she blew up his phone with multiple text messages after getting drunk the night before. The only thing that I could think in my head was you have got to be freaking kidding me, because I know she was going to make to situation bigger than it was. She calls me I talked to her for about thirty minutes just to calm her down, but even after we got off the phone, she was still texting me about the situation that I just advised her on. However, she wasn’t the only one that interrupted me that day. My roommate’s brother who is fourteen years old, came over to the house to mow the lawn. Shortly after finishing mowing, he comes to my room and asked me to take him to get his hair cut in the next twenty minutes. Of course, I said yes, but in my head, I was like can you just not walk there. As the twenty minutes were approaching I go to get him to leave, and he was in his sister bedroom doing whatever he was doing. I happened to look over and see that his sister back from being out of town that this weekend (she went to Denver for a meeting) and she was driving her parent’s minivan. After seeing that she was just sitting outside in the car, I just assumed that she was waiting to take him to get his hair cut. Boy was I wrong. Next thing I know, he comes knocking on my door for me to take him to get his hair cut. Of course, this just pissed me off, but I just had to suck it up and just deal with it. But once I finally got back home, I was able to do some solid reading for once. I was laying down in my bed reading, I notices that this was the longest four hours that I have ever spent on just trying to read 16 pages.

Monday 9/3 (9:00 a.m. to Noon)

I just laid in my bed thinking about the first few pages that I read the day before asking “what the true definition of a myth is”. I first thought back to when was the first time that I ever hear of what a myth, and what definition I receive. Tracking back to my middle school days, the earliest that I could remember hearing about a myth was from my eight-grade reading teacher. Her name was Ms. Kirkland and she was literally one of my most favorite teacher of all. She would have us read cool books that was interesting. Now, back then I was a kid who hated to read. But in her class, reading was fun. After reading poems that Edgar Allen Poe wrote, she introduces the class to a book called The Odysseybook written by Homer. The setup of the class was open read. Everyday each student was asked to read a paragraph, and after the ending of each chapter, she would explain what was going on in the book and who people were. I remember thinking how this book is not real, in the sense of factual history. Yes, I remember this is where I learned about myths and Greek myths at that. Ms. Kirkland told us that Greeks were classic for the best myths out there. She defined a myth, as being an imaginary story that is written about non-human like people who were looked to be gods, goddess, heroes, or heroines with great attributes. Truly, I think she just watered it down because we were only eight graders. From that point on, I have always defined myths to be great fake stories of non-human like people. In comparing that to what I had just read, I can now see that there is more to the what a myth is. Than this thing of what a myth really got me thinking about some of the other stories that I have read. I ended up asking on of my roommate for her to define what a myth is. At first, she laughed and asked me if I really didn’t know what a myth was. I laughed back and told her that it’s part of my class reading, and I just wanted to hear someone else definition of it. Her reply was basically, it’s just a made up or imagination of a story that is told in the form of it being realistic. After hearing her definition of what she believes a myth to be, I wasn’t very shocked seeing that she probably learned of it from a very young age like myself.

Tuesday 9/4 (5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.)

I finished reading the book in the Health Science Library. To answer the assignment question of “what classical mythology is,” to my understanding of the text, it’s a certain group or class (usually referring to Greece or Rome) that belongs to a particular period in time. By the separating of Greek and Rome by time in regard to their high points on the time line. It plays an important role in understanding how intellectuals or academic about the different levels of myths in a boarder sense. Even though there are differences between the Greeks and Romans that also share a strong relationship between the two concerning their literature, art, but mostly their mythology. Because the Romans conquered Greece the majority of the Romans convert a lot of its mythology from the Greek culture. Mythology is simply to be understood as the study of myth. The book goes on to give some examples of what some of the myth are, for example, myths in the Archaic Period and how the Greek mythological corpus was created and circulated during all periods of Greek history. It later on evolved and changed as Greek city-states and their interaction to one another change. Over the course of time the myths definition has been widening to include non-Greek influences on Greek myths.

Answer second question “Do you agree with her reasons for studying myths in the 21stcentury”? Yes, I will say that I do agree with her reasoning, she makes a reasonable and understandable argument about her interest in the modern-day myths. I believe that for those of us who first learned about myth in elementary school, could feel as if myths can only be set in the historical time period. For me because I first learned about what a myth was in middle school and how it was the Greeks who originated this concept, I have always associated myth from being during the Greek (b.c.) period of time. To look at a myth of being more modern way of how we think about the environment that we live in. How the culture that surrounds us has impacted how experience things and people. Would only make sense to our experience in this modern day of living to experience myths through our imaginations, storytelling, documented history, art, and ideas. Midgley goal to get us to become aware of our own myths so that we are not controlled by them. Having a multidisciplinary trait for understanding modern day myths.