Zeus was the leader of the Olympian Gods and was widely known for his bad habit of having affairs with women while he was married with Hera. He was born to Rhea and Cronus, who was a titan. He swallowed his children, but Zeus managed...
The Greek god Zeus is essentially the product of several generations of distrust and thirst for power. When Kronos castrates his father Ouranos and cast his genitals into the sea, he is in essence crowned the new king of the universe. Stepping into such a...
Selflessness, trustworthiness, and sacrificial may be words to describe a hero. In The Odyssey by Homer, despite being portrayed as a hero, Odysseus’ actions seemed to prove otherwise. He shows very minimal traits of being a hero, and thinks more so of himself than others....
Hell has been described as a residence for souls after death has long been a topic of discussion and debate. This notion intrigues man. It is a concept that man cannot know about except through direct experience, which, once obtained, cannot be shared. Yet this...
Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood is a powerfully unsettling novel concerning a lost man in the grotesque, dark world of the American South. Published in 1949, Wise Blood’s protagonist Hazel Motes serves as a reflection of the power of mythology that continues to assert itself in...
“Let him hurl his twin-forked lightning bolts down on my head.. let him make the wildly surging sea waves mingle with the pathways of the heavenly stars… he cannot make me die,” says Prometheus after his suffering gives him the hope to withstand Zeus (Aeschylus...
Prometheus Bound serves as an allegory radiant in theme. Yet, while the symbolism employed by Aeschylus is fairly ubiquitous, and while some scholars argue that the paramount issues of Aeschylus’s play lie in both Prometheus’s services to mankind and in Io’s wanderings and future progeny,...
Aeschylus’ play Prometheus Bound centers on the struggle between Prometheus and Zeus. Prometheus is an intelligent god who is concerned with the welfare of others. Zeus is a tyrant who acts rashly according to his emotion. The two figures clash when Prometheus, a loyal friend...
In many cultures, wind has taken on its own personal identity. Through story telling wind has been given power of the supernatural in order to be used by the gods to influence or punish the heroes of Earth. The supernatural power of wind can be...
The most dreaded lesson in the eyes of a child is the concept of “no.” While most children eventually realize that not everything in the world is available for their taking, the select few who neglect to recognize their limitations inevitably grow up to be...
The eternal struggle between optimism and pessimism is never more apparent than in the comparison of the creation myths of the Yoruba and the Babylonians, The Creation of the Universe and Ife and The Enuma Elish respectively. Humanity springs forth in much the same manner...
The Mesopotamian epic, Gilgamesh, translated by David Ferry tells the tale of loss that has been so prominent to even stand around until this day and time. This concept of loss has especially been nurtured in the Mesopotamian time period because of the almost regular...
The epic poem of Gilgamesh is recognized as one of the earliest works in literature, originating back to the existence of ancient Mesopotamia. Since then, numerous versions of the story have been published, including one by David Ferry, called Gilgamesh. Regardless of the version, they...
Introduction In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the female characters hold small roles, but they are in no way secondary to the male characters, as their roles are pivotal to the story. Through their roles as mothers, harlots, and goddesses, they manipulate the story according to...
As human beings, we are inclined to crave human interaction and acceptance. These two concepts eventually lead to friendship—a token cherished by all of us, including the main characters of The Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu and Gilgamesh. Throughout the epic, the theme of friendship is...
The famous Italian priest Thomas Aquinas once said: “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” How does the loss of a friend affect a human being? In Herbert Mason’s retelling book Gilgamesh: A verse narrative, the concept of friendship...
Questions like these that baffle the human mind, and have done so for centuries: what happens after we die? Is there truly life after death? Such riddles can never be known to those who have not crossed over “to the other side”, so to speak,...
Heracles, Greece’s greatest hero, is a demigod whose mortal life is dominated by a series of successes due to his tremendous strength and failures due to his excessive passions. While, ostensibly, his passions cause him pain and bring about misfortune, he ultimately gains eternal glory...
With intelligence, courage, determination, and other heroic qualities, who wouldn’t want to have a hero, or much less be one? That’s right- no one! We all have heroes in our lives, and we probably have all taken them for granted at one point. But have...