Mythology Blog

Once upon a time,  there was a middle school in a big city in the middle of a small country. At this middle school, there were there was a boy named George who was in the 7 th grade. One day during algebra, George was asked by the teacher to go over to the other building and ask the receptionist for more paper. George hopped out of his desk obligingly and started down the long corridor that lead out of the building and into the other one that housed the administrative offices. When David was almost there, Jared, the school bully, stepped out from behind a corner. Jared was a big kid, almost the size of a 12 th grader, and he never let anyone forget it. He walked over to George and plucked him up by the collar. Jared said to David, “Where do you think you’re running off to? I told you that from now on you owe me lunch money.” George didn’t know what to do. His mom had only given him a dollar for lunch and if he gave it to Jared it would be a long time before he could ea...

Hi there!  Previously I had read the first half of the Japanese Mythology Unit. I liked the stories and was interested to see how Yamato’s adventures turned out. So, for this reading I decided to finish up the unit.   This time though, I was not as fond of Yamato’s stories as I was of the other stories in the unit. Yamato treated his poor wife Tacibana so badly. It really made me sad even though it made for a good story. I wish that at least in the end Tacibana would have just abandoned Yamato, but instead she sacrificed herself for him. Like I have said in many other posts, I feel like women are just really getting the short end of the stick in so many of these stories. The few instances were women don’t get taken advantage of it seems like they are generally portrayed as mean, evil, or nasty in some way. What a horrible dichotomy. Evil or victim. Of the other stories I read for this unit I enjoyed “The Jewel of Heart’s Desire” the most. Although it played into th...

Hi!  Let me just say that I really enjoyed this unit! One of the things that I have liked the least from other readings is how they aren't very just. The bad guy keeps winning. So, reading these stories and getting to see the bad guy lose at the end of most of them was so refreshing.  I also liked that in the stories about the Jackals some characters overlapped, like the hedge hog and the greyhound. Especially since it gave more meaning to the actions in the later stories by creating a more complex backstory than I have seen in other readings. This isn’t something that is easily recreated in a story for my blog just because there isn’t a guarantee that anyone reading the story has read any of the other stories and putting two plots inside one story would be a lot for a blog post.  For a story this week it would be interesting to see what could be done with the first story about Motikatika. I think that I would probably stick to my general theme of mak...