12/9 Last Entry!
In a way, I am very sad about the fact that this is the very last journey entry I will be writing for this Honors 201. In other ways, I am kind of glad that this is the last one because I feel like I never have anything interesting enough to say about the topics of the week or anything we have discussed in class. I really enjoyed being able to have all of us sit down in our normal circle and tell each other what we wrote about for our critical essay papers. It was very fascinating to hear everyone express their interesting facts and explain why they chose the topic that they did. Overall, it was a nice experience to express what we had all been hard at work on for the last few weeks. For class earlier this morning, we obviously had to read The Koran to discuss the various questions that were emailed out to us. As I have explained before, I am not a religious person in any way. I do not worship, pray, attend church, etc. So I did not truly enjoy reading this or the New Testament. I am more excited for Honors 202 next semester to read stories from the medieval times and learn about them, because I will more than likely find those more interesting than these ancient texts. I would just like to say that I will certainly miss this class and the calm atmosphere that we had created for the semester. Since the majority of the students within this Honors 201 class will be in the same Honors 202 class next semester, I am looking forward to see how well we all can create the class together again. It has been a great last few months, and thanks for the opportunities to read these stories, even if I did not completely enjoy them all. :)
12/2 Peer Edit
For the peer edit journal entry, I was given Jessica’s paper to review and edit. The topic of her paper was certainly a very interesting one. She took the idea of ancient Greek mythology and how the Greeks applied it to their every day lives. After seeing that this was the topic, I was really excited, just because of the fact that I adore Greek myths. Overall, the paper was very well written, but kind of sporadic. Some of the ideas seemed to jump around, as all the editors marked with separating out paragraphs and information. Some common spelling errors and forgotten letters, which are easily fixed! Some of the sentences do need to be tweaked, in some ways. I tried to correct certain ones in order to make the overall sentence flow a little easier with the rest of the paragraphs. One suggestion I have for Jessica to revise the paper is just to separate the information a little clearer and sort out the ideas into more specific categories. Also, do not forget the in text citations!! Those are really important to prevent being accused of plagiarism. The information that she found was really fascinating information and I loved the added stories of the mythology. The main one in particular is the story of Hades falling in love with Persephone and making her his queen. This is honestly one of my favorite Greek myths. Relating the myths back to The Odyssey was very effective and well thought out. A suggestion for the paragraph explaining Athena’s human influences would just be using more pronouns instead of writing out Athena’s name each and every time. It can get very repetitive, and somewhat annoying to readers like me (I’m picky, don’t worry about it). This paper was a very good idea and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and learning about some Greek mythology!
11/18 Museum Trip
In order to complete the journal entry for this week, Lauren Hunt and I visited Ball State’s art museum with our friends Megan and Neil. Upon walking up to the front entrance of the museum, we were greeted by the huge inviting staircase with the different sayings written into the stones. Going through the grand double doors, the first thing you see when entering is the hanging display of hundreds of thousands of bottle caps and cut up plastics creating the sense of rain. The sculpture court was very interesting to see when you come in. All the small statues made me interested to see more. The different colors of the walls and the lighting used seemed to portray the different sets of art and sculptures. The wall colors made the different paintings pop among the walls. It seemed to me that the color of the walls reflected the different pieces. I noticed in one room that each painting seemed to contain the color of the wall, which really brought the whole room together. The set up of the rooms make it easy for you to wander around and view the various pieces donated by generous people. Also, the rooms are set up by time period or by culture. You can tell the difference when moving through the rooms when the medieval paintings transform into ancient Chinese and other Asian pieces. The section of modern art that the museum contains is a very interesting collection. I could honestly spend all day long wandering the different rooms in an art museum. Paintings and the history behind them just completely fascinate me and I am so happy that Ball State has its own museum that we have free access to. It is important that more students go visit the museum and see just how beautiful the past can be.
11/10 Paper Idea
For my paper, I am thinking of using Joseph Campbell's 17 Stages of The Monomyth and using them to determine the heroic stature of either Telemachus or Odysseus.
11/11/11 :) The Aeneid
While reading The Aeneid, I can definitely pick out the various differences and similarities between it and The Odyssey. The journey to “a destiny” after the war is a major similarity with the stories. Odysseus is on a journey to return to his home and to his wife Penelope. Along the way, he obviously faces great challenges and misfortunes that keep him from getting to where he is trying to go. Aeneas is on a destined journey to return to Italy in order to found the city of Rome. He also gets mislead and diverted due to various gods effecting his sailing.
One character that I feel was poorly represented was Dido. I only believe this just because of the fact that she is written to be a dramatic queen that cannot live without Aeneas. She is portrayed as powerless and desperate, and that just really bothered me. After falling in love with Aeneas, she says that she will kill herself if he leaves her. She wishes that she had become pregnant with his child in order to have a baby Aeneas running around as well. Even though the gods are the ones that tell him he must leave, she acts like it is the complete end of the world. Dido grabs a sword that had once belonged to Aeneas and she kills herself with it! Her sister, distraught that Dido did not inform her of her plan, wishes that she had known in order to kill herself too! It seems to me that Virgil just portrays women as useless creatures that are only for falling in love and then killing themselves once that love leaves them. I mean, I understand that this actually DOES happen in real life, along with the wanting a baby by the man just to have him stay with the girl. It just really makes me mad that he wrote the character of Dido this way.
11/4 Chuang Tzu
Out of all of the Chuang Tzu writings that we have read and discussed, I think that the two that stand out to me the most are The Dream And The Butterfly and What Fish Enjoy. The Dream And The Butterfly is contemplating the idea of the Transformation of Things. Chuang Tzu writes, “he didn’t know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou.” I found this one line very interesting because it really made me think and consider what he is saying. I mean, if you think about it, both parts of this statement can be entirely true, but which one is the real truth? It just really fascinated me and I found it to be a short but effective story. Now switching over to What Fish Enjoy. This is also a short but thought provoking piece of writing. Honestly, this little story really confused me at first. I was not entirely sure what he was trying to say with it. I am guessing that he means that since neither of them truly know what fish actually enjoy, there is no need for Hui Tzu to question how Chuang Tzu knew what fish really enjoy.
Another of the stories that I found interesting was Death of Chuang Tzu’s Wife. My favorite lines from this story are, “Now there’s been another change and she’s dead. It’s just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter. Now she’s going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate. So I stopped.” This entire quote from the passage just proved to me the wisdom that Chuang Tzu has acquired. He realizes that even his wife’s death is just another change. After all, fate is full of changes that no one person can control.
10/28 The Good Life
In my journal entry this week, I will (obviously) talk about the presentations on the good life. The typical thought of a “good” life includes the generic ideas that almost everyone would first come up with, including money, love, happiness, a job they love, etc. These are very common ideals for everyone. But the truth is, everyone has their own complete idea of a good life. There is no universal good life. People may think that celebrities may have a “good” life according to the media interpretations discussed in class, but if you really pay attention to it, the media seems to focus on the bad things about celebrities. They hone in on the drunk driving, the arrests, the attacking of photographers, those kinds of things. More often then not, the media portrays a celebrity getting in trouble rather then doing charity work or doing volunteer work. Also mentioned in class, we were all talking about different people’s perspectives when it came to a good life. Different cultures and societies have a completely different idea of it then our society would. In the case of Africa, just being able to have one meal a day and have a mud roof over your head would be considered a good life for some societies. For us, we would probably die if that was all we had to live on. We focus so much on material objects that we do not have, when different societies have close to nothing, but can be considered happy in some sense of the word. One of the presentations mentioned that perhaps living a horrible life but still dying happy can be considered a “good” life, even though we would all possibly disagree on that statement. We all have our own concept of this topic, and everyone strives to have their idea of the good life.
10/21 Midterm Reflection
So far, I have really enjoyed being in this honors class. I am very glad that I chose to take this course over some of the others that were offered. The discussion structure that we use is a fantastic way to open ideas that some of us may not have thought about while reading the different stories. I do believe that I should try to participate more than I have so far this semester, but I am not usually very awake that early in the morning! I do love the people that add excitement to the conversations we have in class. It helps to keep the topics interesting and keep most of us awake and alert. I can honestly say that I have learned quite a lot from the various topics we discuss and the stories we read. The way we analyzed The Odyssey really helped me to understand things that I had not understood when I read the story in my freshman year of high school. The presentations we are having in the separate groups are very good too. Having other members of the class “teach” us about these different subjects are very helpful. The heroes and adventures topic was very insightful with the heroes we have already read about and heroes we had not discussed. The parody assignment that we were given was a little difficult with full creative reign, because I have clueless about what to do! But the further along I got with the project, the more fun it became just because of the fact that it was our own creation with limited rules to go along with it. I also enjoy the relaxed atmosphere that we have in our small classroom. This class is definitely my smallest sized student population, and it makes it easier to bond as a class, in my opinion.
10/13 Parodies/Antigone
This week in class, we turned in our parodies and read Antigone. Because of the fact that I lost my voice over the weekend and was unable to describe what I did with my parody, I will write my explanation here for anyone that actually reads this entry. I decided to choose book 21 and 22 of The Odyssey to parody. For those who do not remember which ones these are, these are the ones where Penelope sets the challenge for the suitors to string the bow, and then Odysseus kills them all. I took these two stories and turned them into an episode of Survivor. I entitled it Survivor: Ithaca. I made Athena the “behind the scenes” narrator and Penelope was the host of the show, since she sets the challenge. Odysseus was the obvious winner of the challenge, and all the other suitors were “voted off the island.” The only ones who were not “voted off” were Phemius and Medon, because they were not actually killed in the story. Instead, I wrote that they had acquired immunity idols and had to be saved. I wrote it in the form of a screenplay, so it really would not have been easy to read a part of it in class.
For Antigone, I really enjoyed this story, more than Agamemnon anyway. Antigone was a very strong female character that fought for her right to bury the body of her brother. She believed that he deserved to be buried, and defied her uncle Creon just to do it. Ultimately, her defiance led to her death, but she still stood up for what she believed in. In a way, Haemon and Antigone reminded me of Romeo and Juliet, only because they were young lovers that ended up killing themselves just to be together in the afterlife.
10/7 Presentations/Agamemnon
For my journal entry this week, I decided to make some comments on the two different presentations that were given on Heroes and Adventures. In my honest opinion, I believe that both groups did a very great job explaining the concepts of what it means to be a hero and describing certain heroes that we have discussed in class. Sam and Emma’s presentation was very well put together. The effects and transitions that they used on that website program were extremely interesting and fascinating. They really helped me pay attention to the information that they were trying to present to us. Both of these girls seemed to really know the stories they were explaining, and had very sufficient material within the slides. The three classmates that presented today also did a fabulous job. Elizabeth did an excellent job of helping the discussion along and keeping it going. She knew what she had to talk about and kept it going in a very efficient way. I enjoyed seeing what other groups did with their presentations after Lauren, Jessica, and myself had to give the very first one. It was interesting to see the different uses of creativity from each group.
Now to comment on the story of Agamemnon. There were certain things about Agamemnon that kind of made me mad, or just made me a little bored. The fact that this story is portrayed as an ancient Greek tragedy means that it was shown onstage, and therefore, most of the “battle” action could not be shown. Such as the murder of Agamemnon. I just feel like the story was lacking details that I am sure other classmates also would have liked to see, or read in this case. Also, the part where Agamemnon is not sure whether or not to step on the purple carpet was a little aggravating only because he did not think he should, but ended up doing it anyway. He should have stuck with his original ideals, but just gave them up like it was nothing.
9/30 Job
The story of Job was a very interesting one to me. Never having read the story before, I went in to reading it with a clean slate. As I came to understand, Job was a very loyal and honest man who would never curse the almighty God that gave him all of his riches and children. Satan, being the devil that he is, decided to try and test Job by going to God and pretty much asking if he was sure that Job truly was loyal. Satan says to God that Job is only so loyal because he is the greatest man in the east, and that if everything he has in his life was taken away, Job would curse God. God, deciding to go along with it, followed Satan’s advice but came to see that Job truly was loyal even after everything was taken away. Even after being covered with “sore boils, from the sole of his foot unto his crown,” Job remained true. We wished that he could have died at birth, but he stays loyal. Honestly, you do not see this in our present day time. No one man is truly loyal to anything or anyone, or so it seems to me. Lying and deceit has become an everyday thing in our society, and most people in the world have lost valuable trust. I wish that this kind of faith and love could somehow be restored in our society because it seems like the world would be a much better place if this were to happen. The thing about the story of Job that I did not really understand was just why he had wished that he would have died at birth. Was it because of the pain and torture that he is having to go through now? Is he forgetting the wonderful gifts that he was blessed with before? I am not really sure about this whole part.
9/23 Creation Myths
In my perfectly honest opinion, I believe that the creation myths are all very weird and a little outrageous. As you can tell, I am not a very religious person, but I do not in any way criticize anybody’s religion. I just believe that, obviously, none of these creation myths are logical or that any of them actually seem to be true. I am a huge fan of Greek mythology and the whole story behind the gods, but I do not personally believe in them. Again, not being religious, I had never actually read Genesis before this class. It does seem more plausible than some of the other cultural myths, but I still see no truth in them. After giving a presentation on the creation myths with Jessica and Lauren, I have been able to learn more about how people believe that the earth and man were created. The Hymn to Aten was actually the one myth that stood out to me, because it was all about one pharaoh forcing religion upon his followers. After his father died and he took power, he changed religion in order to make people worship Aten. It seems more plausible for one ruler to try and shape his people’s way of worship than for a cut up body “creating” the earth. As for Theogony, having Aphrodite form from Uranus’ castrated genitals obviously struck me as odd. It genuinely confused me as to how this god could be formed from genitals thrown into a stormy sea. Like I mentioned before, I do not in any way criticize or “bash” any of these creation myths, but having not grown up around religious stories or not having a strong religious background makes it very hard for me to see the truth or anything logical in these myths.
9/16 The Odyssey 3
First thing is first, I would just like to start off by saying that I do NOT, in any way possible, like the ending of this story. I just think that it is stupid to throw in this random scene where the parents of the slain suitors seek revenge on Odysseus and plan to kill him, but Athena decides to make them change their minds. Suddenly, it’s all “you know, I don’t want to kill Odysseus anymore. Let’s go home!” and then peace is “restored” and Odysseus becomes king again. I feel that the scene was pointless and that the story should have just ended with the tearful reunion between Odysseus and his father.
I also did not like the part of the suitors showing up in the underworld after their death scene. Maybe I am just weird, but I do not think it was necessary to recount the events of what had just happened five minutes ago in the story. It seemed like a scene that was put there for no reason, other than to make the story even longer than it already was. Like it was mentioned in class, I think that the people who would tell these adventurous stories back in ancient times would be paid based on how long the story took to tell. Therefore, they made the stories longer.
One thing I do like, however, is how Penelope so slyly tries to be sure that Odysseus is truly who he says he is. She comes up with the plan to reveal their secret to each other, which happens to be the old tree that Odysseus had built their bed around. She knew that only her real husband would know this secret, and he ended up passing her test with flying colors. Even though she did not embrace him immediately upon seeing him, she had every reason to be cautious and use this test to be certain of his identity.
9/9 The Odyssey 2
The past few books in the Odyssey that we have been reading are definitely my favorite books in the entire story. My favorite, of course, has to be book nine with the story of Odysseus and Polyphemos. I first heard the story of this Cyclops when I was only a little girl through a Wishbone computer game based on The Odyssey (don’t judge). Ever since then, this has remained my favorite part. I just enjoy the skill Odysseus uses to trick Polyphemos and escape the island. I do not, however, appreciate the part where he shouts back his name and basically causes more unnecessary trouble for himself and his men.
It seems to me that even though Odysseus is portrayed to be this heroic and brave man, he just keeps proving himself to be idiotic. Almost every decision he makes gets more and more of his men killed, until he ends up being the only man alive and fighting to get home. The only time I remember reading about the men getting themselves killed was on the island of the Lord of Noon, when Odysseus specifically told them to not kill the immortal cattle and they did anyway. Lord Helios punished them for their crime, which they were indeed warned would happen.
At the end of book thirteen, Athena grants Odysseus with a completely different appearance in order to return to his palace and save his wife from the many suitors that have invaded his home. Having read The Odyssey before, I do know what happens when he returns home. I am excited to get to read this part in the next week book assignments we get, because I enjoy the ending of this entire story. I definitely consider The Odyssey to be one of my favorite stories in ancient literature, and I am happy that we are getting the chance to re-read it.
9/2 The Odyssey
As a freshman in high school, I read The Odyssey with my honors English class, but the story we had read started on book five. So, obviously, this is my first time ever reading the background story of Telemakhos’ journey to find out the truth about his father. Throughout these four different books, we learn that Odysseus is a brave and strong warrior. People love him and honor him as if he were a god. But when we first meet Odysseus in book five on Kalypso’s island, he find him crying and yearning to be home with his wife, Penelope. This first encounter of Odysseus can be used to show us just how mortal and vulnerable Odysseus really is. Yes, he is a brave and ferocious warrior, but he is also still a human being that can express his weakest emotions.
The story of the Odyssey is one of my favorites. I love reading and learning about the Greek gods and how they can affect mankind at their own will. Greek history fascinates me. So far, this section of the Odyssey is not really the greatest thing I’ve read, but it gave me an insight into the rest of the story that I never even knew existed. The first four books of this story shows the caring and compassionate side of the goddess Athena. She chooses to help Telemakhos at any cost, by posing as different people associated with him. She protects him, guides him, and provides the wisdom he needs to seek out the truth about his long lost father. If it were not for Athena’s guidance, Telemakhos would have never found the courage to try and find out what happened to his father and try to save his mother from the suitors that are seeking her hand in marriage.
8/26 The Epic of Gilgamesh Response:
The Epic of Gilgamesh seems to me to be a story of self discovery and finding the good within one’s self. Gilgamesh is a cruel ruler who abuses his power in every way possible, but upon meeting Enkidu, his way of rationality completely changes. He becomes caring, nurturing, kind, and loving. He considers Enkidu to be his brother and feels deep sadness upon his death. To me, the transformation of Gilgamesh appears to be contributed towards Enkidu’s nature. Enkidu was created to be equal to Gilgamesh, if not more powerful, and I feel as if this quality is what aided Gilgamesh to treat him as his equal. This, in turn, opened up Gilgamesh to feelings of love for another person, instead of cruelty towards the city. Enkidu, in a way, tames Gilgamesh’s ways.
Another thing that I noticed about this story is the almost stupidity of the two characters. Enkidu worries tremendously about death and the dreams that he keeps having. His death then affects Gilgamesh. He is so overcome with the fear of death, that it inhibits him from thinking of anything else. He weeps over and mourns Enkidu’s death, but does not attempt to move on with his life. He only sets out on a journey to almost “stop” the fate he believes is in store for him. He worries that he will soon die just because Enkidu had died. I could be wrong, but I interpreted the story to mean that he was searching for a way to create immortal life for himself. Instead of accepting death, he acts with stupidity and tries to find a way to cheat death.
As an ending note, The Epic of Gilgamesh reminded me of The Odyssey just because of the fact that both Gilgamesh and Odysseus set out on a journey for something they both truly care about. The only difference is that Odysseus is traveling to get back to save his true love and Gilgamesh is traveling in order to save himself.
Sarah Behm
12/9 Last Entry!In a way, I am very sad about the fact that this is the very last journey entry I will be writing for this Honors 201. In other ways, I am kind of glad that this is the last one because I feel like I never have anything interesting enough to say about the topics of the week or anything we have discussed in class. I really enjoyed being able to have all of us sit down in our normal circle and tell each other what we wrote about for our critical essay papers. It was very fascinating to hear everyone express their interesting facts and explain why they chose the topic that they did. Overall, it was a nice experience to express what we had all been hard at work on for the last few weeks. For class earlier this morning, we obviously had to read The Koran to discuss the various questions that were emailed out to us. As I have explained before, I am not a religious person in any way. I do not worship, pray, attend church, etc. So I did not truly enjoy reading this or the New Testament. I am more excited for Honors 202 next semester to read stories from the medieval times and learn about them, because I will more than likely find those more interesting than these ancient texts. I would just like to say that I will certainly miss this class and the calm atmosphere that we had created for the semester. Since the majority of the students within this Honors 201 class will be in the same Honors 202 class next semester, I am looking forward to see how well we all can create the class together again. It has been a great last few months, and thanks for the opportunities to read these stories, even if I did not completely enjoy them all. :)
12/2 Peer Edit
For the peer edit journal entry, I was given Jessica’s paper to review and edit. The topic of her paper was certainly a very interesting one. She took the idea of ancient Greek mythology and how the Greeks applied it to their every day lives. After seeing that this was the topic, I was really excited, just because of the fact that I adore Greek myths. Overall, the paper was very well written, but kind of sporadic. Some of the ideas seemed to jump around, as all the editors marked with separating out paragraphs and information. Some common spelling errors and forgotten letters, which are easily fixed! Some of the sentences do need to be tweaked, in some ways. I tried to correct certain ones in order to make the overall sentence flow a little easier with the rest of the paragraphs. One suggestion I have for Jessica to revise the paper is just to separate the information a little clearer and sort out the ideas into more specific categories. Also, do not forget the in text citations!! Those are really important to prevent being accused of plagiarism. The information that she found was really fascinating information and I loved the added stories of the mythology. The main one in particular is the story of Hades falling in love with Persephone and making her his queen. This is honestly one of my favorite Greek myths. Relating the myths back to The Odyssey was very effective and well thought out. A suggestion for the paragraph explaining Athena’s human influences would just be using more pronouns instead of writing out Athena’s name each and every time. It can get very repetitive, and somewhat annoying to readers like me (I’m picky, don’t worry about it). This paper was a very good idea and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and learning about some Greek mythology!
11/18 Museum Trip
In order to complete the journal entry for this week, Lauren Hunt and I visited Ball State’s art museum with our friends Megan and Neil. Upon walking up to the front entrance of the museum, we were greeted by the huge inviting staircase with the different sayings written into the stones. Going through the grand double doors, the first thing you see when entering is the hanging display of hundreds of thousands of bottle caps and cut up plastics creating the sense of rain. The sculpture court was very interesting to see when you come in. All the small statues made me interested to see more. The different colors of the walls and the lighting used seemed to portray the different sets of art and sculptures. The wall colors made the different paintings pop among the walls. It seemed to me that the color of the walls reflected the different pieces. I noticed in one room that each painting seemed to contain the color of the wall, which really brought the whole room together. The set up of the rooms make it easy for you to wander around and view the various pieces donated by generous people. Also, the rooms are set up by time period or by culture. You can tell the difference when moving through the rooms when the medieval paintings transform into ancient Chinese and other Asian pieces. The section of modern art that the museum contains is a very interesting collection. I could honestly spend all day long wandering the different rooms in an art museum. Paintings and the history behind them just completely fascinate me and I am so happy that Ball State has its own museum that we have free access to. It is important that more students go visit the museum and see just how beautiful the past can be.
11/10 Paper Idea
For my paper, I am thinking of using Joseph Campbell's 17 Stages of The Monomyth and using them to determine the heroic stature of either Telemachus or Odysseus.
11/11/11 :) The Aeneid
While reading The Aeneid, I can definitely pick out the various differences and similarities between it and The Odyssey. The journey to “a destiny” after the war is a major similarity with the stories. Odysseus is on a journey to return to his home and to his wife Penelope. Along the way, he obviously faces great challenges and misfortunes that keep him from getting to where he is trying to go. Aeneas is on a destined journey to return to Italy in order to found the city of Rome. He also gets mislead and diverted due to various gods effecting his sailing.
One character that I feel was poorly represented was Dido. I only believe this just because of the fact that she is written to be a dramatic queen that cannot live without Aeneas. She is portrayed as powerless and desperate, and that just really bothered me. After falling in love with Aeneas, she says that she will kill herself if he leaves her. She wishes that she had become pregnant with his child in order to have a baby Aeneas running around as well. Even though the gods are the ones that tell him he must leave, she acts like it is the complete end of the world. Dido grabs a sword that had once belonged to Aeneas and she kills herself with it! Her sister, distraught that Dido did not inform her of her plan, wishes that she had known in order to kill herself too! It seems to me that Virgil just portrays women as useless creatures that are only for falling in love and then killing themselves once that love leaves them. I mean, I understand that this actually DOES happen in real life, along with the wanting a baby by the man just to have him stay with the girl. It just really makes me mad that he wrote the character of Dido this way.
11/4 Chuang Tzu
Out of all of the Chuang Tzu writings that we have read and discussed, I think that the two that stand out to me the most are The Dream And The Butterfly and What Fish Enjoy. The Dream And The Butterfly is contemplating the idea of the Transformation of Things. Chuang Tzu writes, “he didn’t know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou.” I found this one line very interesting because it really made me think and consider what he is saying. I mean, if you think about it, both parts of this statement can be entirely true, but which one is the real truth? It just really fascinated me and I found it to be a short but effective story. Now switching over to What Fish Enjoy. This is also a short but thought provoking piece of writing. Honestly, this little story really confused me at first. I was not entirely sure what he was trying to say with it. I am guessing that he means that since neither of them truly know what fish actually enjoy, there is no need for Hui Tzu to question how Chuang Tzu knew what fish really enjoy.
Another of the stories that I found interesting was Death of Chuang Tzu’s Wife. My favorite lines from this story are, “Now there’s been another change and she’s dead. It’s just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter. Now she’s going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate. So I stopped.” This entire quote from the passage just proved to me the wisdom that Chuang Tzu has acquired. He realizes that even his wife’s death is just another change. After all, fate is full of changes that no one person can control.
10/28 The Good Life
In my journal entry this week, I will (obviously) talk about the presentations on the good life. The typical thought of a “good” life includes the generic ideas that almost everyone would first come up with, including money, love, happiness, a job they love, etc. These are very common ideals for everyone. But the truth is, everyone has their own complete idea of a good life. There is no universal good life. People may think that celebrities may have a “good” life according to the media interpretations discussed in class, but if you really pay attention to it, the media seems to focus on the bad things about celebrities. They hone in on the drunk driving, the arrests, the attacking of photographers, those kinds of things. More often then not, the media portrays a celebrity getting in trouble rather then doing charity work or doing volunteer work. Also mentioned in class, we were all talking about different people’s perspectives when it came to a good life. Different cultures and societies have a completely different idea of it then our society would. In the case of Africa, just being able to have one meal a day and have a mud roof over your head would be considered a good life for some societies. For us, we would probably die if that was all we had to live on. We focus so much on material objects that we do not have, when different societies have close to nothing, but can be considered happy in some sense of the word. One of the presentations mentioned that perhaps living a horrible life but still dying happy can be considered a “good” life, even though we would all possibly disagree on that statement. We all have our own concept of this topic, and everyone strives to have their idea of the good life.
10/21 Midterm Reflection
So far, I have really enjoyed being in this honors class. I am very glad that I chose to take this course over some of the others that were offered. The discussion structure that we use is a fantastic way to open ideas that some of us may not have thought about while reading the different stories. I do believe that I should try to participate more than I have so far this semester, but I am not usually very awake that early in the morning! I do love the people that add excitement to the conversations we have in class. It helps to keep the topics interesting and keep most of us awake and alert. I can honestly say that I have learned quite a lot from the various topics we discuss and the stories we read. The way we analyzed The Odyssey really helped me to understand things that I had not understood when I read the story in my freshman year of high school. The presentations we are having in the separate groups are very good too. Having other members of the class “teach” us about these different subjects are very helpful. The heroes and adventures topic was very insightful with the heroes we have already read about and heroes we had not discussed. The parody assignment that we were given was a little difficult with full creative reign, because I have clueless about what to do! But the further along I got with the project, the more fun it became just because of the fact that it was our own creation with limited rules to go along with it. I also enjoy the relaxed atmosphere that we have in our small classroom. This class is definitely my smallest sized student population, and it makes it easier to bond as a class, in my opinion.
10/13 Parodies/Antigone
This week in class, we turned in our parodies and read Antigone. Because of the fact that I lost my voice over the weekend and was unable to describe what I did with my parody, I will write my explanation here for anyone that actually reads this entry. I decided to choose book 21 and 22 of The Odyssey to parody. For those who do not remember which ones these are, these are the ones where Penelope sets the challenge for the suitors to string the bow, and then Odysseus kills them all. I took these two stories and turned them into an episode of Survivor. I entitled it Survivor: Ithaca. I made Athena the “behind the scenes” narrator and Penelope was the host of the show, since she sets the challenge. Odysseus was the obvious winner of the challenge, and all the other suitors were “voted off the island.” The only ones who were not “voted off” were Phemius and Medon, because they were not actually killed in the story. Instead, I wrote that they had acquired immunity idols and had to be saved. I wrote it in the form of a screenplay, so it really would not have been easy to read a part of it in class.
For Antigone, I really enjoyed this story, more than Agamemnon anyway. Antigone was a very strong female character that fought for her right to bury the body of her brother. She believed that he deserved to be buried, and defied her uncle Creon just to do it. Ultimately, her defiance led to her death, but she still stood up for what she believed in. In a way, Haemon and Antigone reminded me of Romeo and Juliet, only because they were young lovers that ended up killing themselves just to be together in the afterlife.
10/7 Presentations/Agamemnon
For my journal entry this week, I decided to make some comments on the two different presentations that were given on Heroes and Adventures. In my honest opinion, I believe that both groups did a very great job explaining the concepts of what it means to be a hero and describing certain heroes that we have discussed in class. Sam and Emma’s presentation was very well put together. The effects and transitions that they used on that website program were extremely interesting and fascinating. They really helped me pay attention to the information that they were trying to present to us. Both of these girls seemed to really know the stories they were explaining, and had very sufficient material within the slides. The three classmates that presented today also did a fabulous job. Elizabeth did an excellent job of helping the discussion along and keeping it going. She knew what she had to talk about and kept it going in a very efficient way. I enjoyed seeing what other groups did with their presentations after Lauren, Jessica, and myself had to give the very first one. It was interesting to see the different uses of creativity from each group.
Now to comment on the story of Agamemnon. There were certain things about Agamemnon that kind of made me mad, or just made me a little bored. The fact that this story is portrayed as an ancient Greek tragedy means that it was shown onstage, and therefore, most of the “battle” action could not be shown. Such as the murder of Agamemnon. I just feel like the story was lacking details that I am sure other classmates also would have liked to see, or read in this case. Also, the part where Agamemnon is not sure whether or not to step on the purple carpet was a little aggravating only because he did not think he should, but ended up doing it anyway. He should have stuck with his original ideals, but just gave them up like it was nothing.
9/30 Job
The story of Job was a very interesting one to me. Never having read the story before, I went in to reading it with a clean slate. As I came to understand, Job was a very loyal and honest man who would never curse the almighty God that gave him all of his riches and children. Satan, being the devil that he is, decided to try and test Job by going to God and pretty much asking if he was sure that Job truly was loyal. Satan says to God that Job is only so loyal because he is the greatest man in the east, and that if everything he has in his life was taken away, Job would curse God. God, deciding to go along with it, followed Satan’s advice but came to see that Job truly was loyal even after everything was taken away. Even after being covered with “sore boils, from the sole of his foot unto his crown,” Job remained true. We wished that he could have died at birth, but he stays loyal. Honestly, you do not see this in our present day time. No one man is truly loyal to anything or anyone, or so it seems to me. Lying and deceit has become an everyday thing in our society, and most people in the world have lost valuable trust. I wish that this kind of faith and love could somehow be restored in our society because it seems like the world would be a much better place if this were to happen. The thing about the story of Job that I did not really understand was just why he had wished that he would have died at birth. Was it because of the pain and torture that he is having to go through now? Is he forgetting the wonderful gifts that he was blessed with before? I am not really sure about this whole part.
9/23 Creation Myths
In my perfectly honest opinion, I believe that the creation myths are all very weird and a little outrageous. As you can tell, I am not a very religious person, but I do not in any way criticize anybody’s religion. I just believe that, obviously, none of these creation myths are logical or that any of them actually seem to be true. I am a huge fan of Greek mythology and the whole story behind the gods, but I do not personally believe in them. Again, not being religious, I had never actually read Genesis before this class. It does seem more plausible than some of the other cultural myths, but I still see no truth in them. After giving a presentation on the creation myths with Jessica and Lauren, I have been able to learn more about how people believe that the earth and man were created. The Hymn to Aten was actually the one myth that stood out to me, because it was all about one pharaoh forcing religion upon his followers. After his father died and he took power, he changed religion in order to make people worship Aten. It seems more plausible for one ruler to try and shape his people’s way of worship than for a cut up body “creating” the earth. As for Theogony, having Aphrodite form from Uranus’ castrated genitals obviously struck me as odd. It genuinely confused me as to how this god could be formed from genitals thrown into a stormy sea. Like I mentioned before, I do not in any way criticize or “bash” any of these creation myths, but having not grown up around religious stories or not having a strong religious background makes it very hard for me to see the truth or anything logical in these myths.
9/16 The Odyssey 3
First thing is first, I would just like to start off by saying that I do NOT, in any way possible, like the ending of this story. I just think that it is stupid to throw in this random scene where the parents of the slain suitors seek revenge on Odysseus and plan to kill him, but Athena decides to make them change their minds. Suddenly, it’s all “you know, I don’t want to kill Odysseus anymore. Let’s go home!” and then peace is “restored” and Odysseus becomes king again. I feel that the scene was pointless and that the story should have just ended with the tearful reunion between Odysseus and his father.
I also did not like the part of the suitors showing up in the underworld after their death scene. Maybe I am just weird, but I do not think it was necessary to recount the events of what had just happened five minutes ago in the story. It seemed like a scene that was put there for no reason, other than to make the story even longer than it already was. Like it was mentioned in class, I think that the people who would tell these adventurous stories back in ancient times would be paid based on how long the story took to tell. Therefore, they made the stories longer.
One thing I do like, however, is how Penelope so slyly tries to be sure that Odysseus is truly who he says he is. She comes up with the plan to reveal their secret to each other, which happens to be the old tree that Odysseus had built their bed around. She knew that only her real husband would know this secret, and he ended up passing her test with flying colors. Even though she did not embrace him immediately upon seeing him, she had every reason to be cautious and use this test to be certain of his identity.
9/9 The Odyssey 2
The past few books in the Odyssey that we have been reading are definitely my favorite books in the entire story. My favorite, of course, has to be book nine with the story of Odysseus and Polyphemos. I first heard the story of this Cyclops when I was only a little girl through a Wishbone computer game based on The Odyssey (don’t judge). Ever since then, this has remained my favorite part. I just enjoy the skill Odysseus uses to trick Polyphemos and escape the island. I do not, however, appreciate the part where he shouts back his name and basically causes more unnecessary trouble for himself and his men.
It seems to me that even though Odysseus is portrayed to be this heroic and brave man, he just keeps proving himself to be idiotic. Almost every decision he makes gets more and more of his men killed, until he ends up being the only man alive and fighting to get home. The only time I remember reading about the men getting themselves killed was on the island of the Lord of Noon, when Odysseus specifically told them to not kill the immortal cattle and they did anyway. Lord Helios punished them for their crime, which they were indeed warned would happen.
At the end of book thirteen, Athena grants Odysseus with a completely different appearance in order to return to his palace and save his wife from the many suitors that have invaded his home. Having read The Odyssey before, I do know what happens when he returns home. I am excited to get to read this part in the next week book assignments we get, because I enjoy the ending of this entire story. I definitely consider The Odyssey to be one of my favorite stories in ancient literature, and I am happy that we are getting the chance to re-read it.
9/2 The Odyssey
As a freshman in high school, I read The Odyssey with my honors English class, but the story we had read started on book five. So, obviously, this is my first time ever reading the background story of Telemakhos’ journey to find out the truth about his father. Throughout these four different books, we learn that Odysseus is a brave and strong warrior. People love him and honor him as if he were a god. But when we first meet Odysseus in book five on Kalypso’s island, he find him crying and yearning to be home with his wife, Penelope. This first encounter of Odysseus can be used to show us just how mortal and vulnerable Odysseus really is. Yes, he is a brave and ferocious warrior, but he is also still a human being that can express his weakest emotions.
The story of the Odyssey is one of my favorites. I love reading and learning about the Greek gods and how they can affect mankind at their own will. Greek history fascinates me. So far, this section of the Odyssey is not really the greatest thing I’ve read, but it gave me an insight into the rest of the story that I never even knew existed. The first four books of this story shows the caring and compassionate side of the goddess Athena. She chooses to help Telemakhos at any cost, by posing as different people associated with him. She protects him, guides him, and provides the wisdom he needs to seek out the truth about his long lost father. If it were not for Athena’s guidance, Telemakhos would have never found the courage to try and find out what happened to his father and try to save his mother from the suitors that are seeking her hand in marriage.
8/26 The Epic of Gilgamesh Response:
The Epic of Gilgamesh seems to me to be a story of self discovery and finding the good within one’s self. Gilgamesh is a cruel ruler who abuses his power in every way possible, but upon meeting Enkidu, his way of rationality completely changes. He becomes caring, nurturing, kind, and loving. He considers Enkidu to be his brother and feels deep sadness upon his death. To me, the transformation of Gilgamesh appears to be contributed towards Enkidu’s nature. Enkidu was created to be equal to Gilgamesh, if not more powerful, and I feel as if this quality is what aided Gilgamesh to treat him as his equal. This, in turn, opened up Gilgamesh to feelings of love for another person, instead of cruelty towards the city. Enkidu, in a way, tames Gilgamesh’s ways.
Another thing that I noticed about this story is the almost stupidity of the two characters. Enkidu worries tremendously about death and the dreams that he keeps having. His death then affects Gilgamesh. He is so overcome with the fear of death, that it inhibits him from thinking of anything else. He weeps over and mourns Enkidu’s death, but does not attempt to move on with his life. He only sets out on a journey to almost “stop” the fate he believes is in store for him. He worries that he will soon die just because Enkidu had died. I could be wrong, but I interpreted the story to mean that he was searching for a way to create immortal life for himself. Instead of accepting death, he acts with stupidity and tries to find a way to cheat death.
As an ending note, The Epic of Gilgamesh reminded me of The Odyssey just because of the fact that both Gilgamesh and Odysseus set out on a journey for something they both truly care about. The only difference is that Odysseus is traveling to get back to save his true love and Gilgamesh is traveling in order to save himself.