Last Post

And I'm off to the final as soon as I finish typing this. Hope everyone does well on them and I'm looking forward to seeing the last presentation. I had a rather insane semester and yes Mick I am glad I finally decided to take this class. It was something relaxing and enjoyable that I could turn to in the middle of my 12hr day. So, I had a yet another wonderful class with Professor Sexson, good luck everyone and have a great holiday season!

Group Presentations

Just to let everyone know I have been trying ever since the presentations to upload the pictures onto my e-journal and as of yet have not managed this feat. I appologize and promise to continue trying for the rest of finals week. And great job everyone! Truely creative and exciting presentations this semester!

Second Half of Paper

Originally my paper was to have consisted of two parts. First the dual images of sin in Biblical and Classical literature and then the parallel figures of Eve and Pandora in their respective mythologies. My opening paragraph concluded with this "In addition an examination will be made of the first woman in Biblical and Classical mythology and the role she has played in the downfall of humanity. This woman is seen in the dual figure of Eve and Pandora. They are the mothers of the human race in their respective traditions as well as responsible for all the evils that have since befallen their children. " However I didn't realize that the really interesting subject was that of Eve and Pandora and instead wrote four pages on sin before becoming aware that I had run out of space and time. I still think this would be a fascinating topic and so am posting the few notes that I actually got onto the computer from my notebooks before the paper was due.



Frye writes of the clear connection between the Garden and Woman. Before Eve came, Adam was not alone for he was complemented by the feminine in nature.
Because Eve was a second garden, taking the place of the garden in Adam's affections, when she became responsible for sin and the Fall, the garden as nature was thereby also associated to evil, si and corruption. In addition, man was given dominion over the 'weaker' woman and nature. His attitude towards both then becomes one of superiority and control. This can also be seen on a historical basis; the falling out of humankind wit nature as men move away from living in harmony and in the cycles of nature as hunter/gatherers to seeking mastery and control over earth(and in connection women) through agriculture.

“Through Adam’s fall, we sinned all”. Adam’s sin, however, was no merely eating a forbidden fruit, it was also the failing of listening to a woman, his wife Eve.
The traditions that give us the figures of Eve and Pandora are sparse and contain large gaping holes. What must be remembered is that both stories are completely open to interpretation. It is the interpretation that has been widely accepted in a patriarchal society that is my concern.
The twin stories of Eve and Pandora can be seen as the domination and submission of the Mother Goddess to the Father God. Pandora herself was in fact a Goddess, a fact that Hesiod may well have known but completely ignored when he wrote his Works and Days. Through this literary work the male in Hesiod and Zeus sujegate the female who is Pandora by tearing her from her state as goddess and forcing her into a role of not only a mere mortal woman but also degrading her as the woman responsible for all the ills in the world.

In the beginning man lived in a perfect world. But through two women, Eve and Pandora, who indulged in characteristically human (and female) traits of curiosity and a hunger for knowledge, the whole world was plunged into darkness and pain. If this sounds melodramatic, it is only to emphasis the weight history and reflected society has placed on these two.

As these two are the women the question first arises as to what man was before women. (complementary) Man is then not only complemented/ companioned by women, he is also completed by her. Both Biblical and Classical traditions would have it otherwise and Eve and Pandora become not the other half of a whole but an extra gift added on. Both women are referred to in this manner with Pandora being in Hesiod’s Works and Days a literal gift. After Prometheus stole fire form the gods to benefit humanity, Pandora was designed as an evil gift that was to be “the ruin of mankind”... In both Genesis and Works and Days there is the question of what was man before God(s) gave his woman. Like the philosophical questions of whether we would recognize good without its opposing evil or light without the contrast of dark, what was male without female? In truth, nothing. Female is the opposing dynamic to male in all cultures, yet because of the strength of Genesis 3 over Genesis 1, we forget that also in the beginning God made them, male and female. This concept is overpowered by the vivid imagery of Eve being made from Adam’s rib and the later casting out of the garden and Adam being given dominion over his wife.

“the subordination of women was part of divine punishment” Almond Philip BS580.A4A8

The story of Pandora is of the lessening of a great goddess by the dual patriarchal figures of Zeus and Hesiod so that she is by divine will made subordinate to men and Gods alike
Ultimate reversal, trampling even of women and Goddess worship.

Although we blame Eve for mankind’s fall, it is Adam’s fall and Adam’s parallel in Christ who will redeem humanity through his death. This concept, as seen in Romans 5: 12, ignores the power of the feminine as witnessed through Eden, Eve and finally Mary. Although it is the men in this patriarchal society that take all the credit, nothing they have done could be accomplished without the backing of women, down to Mary’s meeting with the Master in the garden and having the belief that the other apostles failed to have.

Sin: a trangression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate
Deliberate disobedience to the known will of God
Original sin: the condition of sin that marks all humans as a result of Adam’s first act of disobedience

Whether or not these stories are true is irrelevant. What is important is that they were written and read and that this view of women has permeated our culture in a unique way.
Paradise Lost 4:714-15 717-19

The story of Eve is “at the heart of the concept of women in Western civilization” John Phillips

End Times

I know everyone(i.e. the Western World) has always felt this about their own time, but doesn't 2000 seem like a perfect turning point for humanity? Doesn't it seem like after 2000 years of growth and development it is time for something to happen? A particular trend in Europe throughout the ages was that of millennialism. This is the belief that the world would end, all the sinners would go to hell, and Jesus would return to rule over a paradise filled with the chosen elite, the martyrs whom the world had previously scorned. For people of this belief, certain years held special import, like the 666 or perhaps 2000. The numbers of a system we ourselves created is enriched with a sense of mystical energies and coincedences making a certain date extra special. This comes of course from the natural desire to see the precident of myth in every action. Within that system though, shouldn't something have happened on 2000? It's such a cool number and the turn of an entire 2000 year period... My parents weren't particularly alarmed when Y2K finally rolled around but I was positive my computer would explode or crash and I would lose all of my saved computer games. When it didn't happen, (although I was glad I wouldn't have to rebuild my characters all over again) I must admit I was a bit disappointed. Nothing happened and the world continued on. It always has but we still always expect it to end.

P.S. In case anyone is wondering, the next apocalypse due date is in 2012 when the Mayan calander ends. I'm looking forward to that too.

Last Ch. of Calasso

"With the alphabet, the Greeks would teach themselves to experience the gods in the silence of the mind, and no longer in the full and normal presence, as Cadmus himself had the day of his marriage."

The closing lines of Calasso's Marriage are not about the loss of the gods but about the full integration and absorption of God into Man. True the gods no longer walk among us but that is because they are now part of us, one with us. This is, to me, more uplifting than anything else. There is a longing for the days when the gods feasted with men, as friends if not equals, but what we have now is... what we have and we cannot bring back the 'good old days' and knowing that the gods are not completely gone, simply scaled down, is reassuring.

What will come next? Vico talks of a cycle, that after these days of chaos there is nowhere to return but back up to the Age of the Gods. But if the Age of the Gods was accomplished through the lack of writing, and the mythical made imminent through the superstitions of the uneducated, can our civilization come again to a similar place? To have that return suggests some great catastrophe. It sometime seems as though a people's belief system cannot be complete without some form of literal eschatology. How can humankind survive for any period of time without destruction, either by nature or brought about by ourselves? It doesn't seem possible that we can continue living this way without some change as dramatic and destructive as an apocalypse.

I once read a book by psychologist/astrologer Barbara Hand Chow about end times. Her theory was that humans as a whole have suffered through so many catastrophes taht we hold a collective fear/belief in the end of the world. This belief leads unconsiously to self-destructive behavior; after all its not such a bad thing to pollute the earth when everything is fated to be destroyed anyway. That is what is so uplifting about the concept of realized eschatology. If the world has already ended only we haven't realized than the only thing left for us to do is our lives in the best way we can, in a manner most respectful and caring to our world and most beneficial to our society. Then again I am an optimist and have recognized my tendency to try to end on a hopeful note.

The Future of Sin

This question of the future also ties into my paper on sin. Through the literature the concept of sin could be seen to evolve on a parallel course with culture and society. As man moves from collectivist to individual, so too does the focus of sin shift from the community(with the sin of one affecting all) to the individual(where each one is responsible only to himself). My next concern is to where we as a society are moving on to? What new paths with the conception of sin take? The interesting thing that I see is the trend to drop the idea of sin entirely. In this 'new age' people are tired of constantly being told they're going to hell to burn for eternity because of some thing that they did. Additionally we have an American world that encourages the choice of the individual to whatever he damn well pleases with a noticable decrease in self-control and self-monitoring. Gone are the days when children should be seen not heard and they have been replaced by teenagers with credit cards who are putting their parents in dept long before college bills come in. This reaction to the centuries of heavy guilt and sin is rather extreme but to be expected. We are always rebelling against the previous generation and there is a natural striving towards balance which has been missing in this last millenium of sin.

The Truths of Suffering

Valerie Dowbenko
Professor Michael Sexson
English 212
December 9, 2005


The Truths of Suffering
The rise of Christianity and its domination over Europe enforced the cultural view of humans as evil, dirty and ‘sinful’. From dust we came and to dust we shall return but dust, and thereby nature, are stained with sin and must be transcended. However influential Christianity may now be there is more than one view of sin which will be examined here. From the Biblical tradition comes the relatively new concept of original sin and also the earlier tradition of sin as disobedience to God. In Classical literary traditions is the view of sin as the dishonoring of significant persons and the belief that sin is ignorance. Accompanying these four concepts of sin is the role suffering plays in each.

With hundreds of years of development and theological hindsight, it is now possible to see the spread of sin through the ancient Biblical world; the actual concept of sin was not nailed down so to speak until the beginnings of Christianity. Looking back in history through the Hebrew Bible it is possible to create a definition of sin as it would have been for the ancient Israelites. To sin was to “do what was evil in the sight of the Lord”. I Samuel 15:19.5. Every misfortune that could befall a person or nation came about as a result of this evil-doing. If great calamites and misfortunes came upon a person, it was clear that they had sinned again the Lord. It was extremely important to know the laws laid down to Moses and obey them to the letter because otherwise God’s wrath would be upon the sinner. In the case of Judah’s sons, Er and Oram, the punishment for being “wicked in the sight of the Lord” was death. In later years when the Israelites had God-anointed kings, the entire nation was punished for the sins that one. Sometimes, like in the case of King Jeroboam, the punishment was delayed for a few generations and so the actions of a ‘bad’ king were visited unto his descendants.

This harsh justice creates many moral dilemmas and such questions are addressed in part by Job. The idea that pain and suffering are forms of punishment were previously established in the Hebrew Bible but by the time of the Book of Job, questions were being raised such as why innocents suffer. To such a question there are few if any satisfactory answers.
The later Christian traditions redefine sin, making it harsher than the older version of retributive justice but also offering an escape from suffering and death. Original sin developed; the idea that man is innately tainted and evil, sinful from birth. Suffering was no longer a specific punishment but an overarching world condition of pain for all humanity because of one first sin that Adam committed. “…Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.” Romans 5:12. However with this universal suffering came a cure in the form of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Romans 5: 18-19 All are born stained but people can be baptized and whipped clean of the original sin, accept Jesus Christ as savior, and be redeemed before God.

The Classical tradition is a different matter entirely. While the Israelites and Christians produced one final condensed collection of writings on their beliefs—the Bible—the Classics have no one main theological source. Two themes of sin emerge in the Classical traditions. The Greeks lived with capricious and vengeful gods and of course all lived or died at their whim. To sin against the Gods was not so much to disobey them (although that of course was bad) as it was to dishonor them. Mocking or challenging the gods quickly led to one’s downfall but few rules were laid down as stringently as they were to the Israelites except this one: always honor and respect the gods, your parents, and strangers. Disregarding any one of these three brings pain and misery upon the sinner. It is this sin that trapped Orestes. His dilemma in the Oresteia is the one of balancing those three elements of honor to avoid sinning. The obvious example of this is the focus of the play: the question of how to honor one’s parents. Orestes was confronted with the responsibility of honoring his father by revenging himself upon his mother, except his mother too was a parent. The role of the gods is problematic considering how many must be placated. Someone will end up angered by Orestes actions, an unavoidable sin. The third law comes in when Orestes pretends to be a stranger to invoke the ancient laws of hospitality then abuses this privilege by killing his host who is also his mother. He is bound by Apollo to kill her or face another terrible punishment for the sin of disobeying the gods and failing to honor his father. It is quite a bind he is in and shows the tangles of life and the complications that come simply because we are human.

The other Classical sin was ignorance. To forget or not to know oneself was a grave fault. As humans we are naturally ignorant of many things and it is that ignorance that makes us sinful. We have forgotten how to live and how to be. It was believe that at birth a baby remembered all and knew all. As that child grew they were educated away from those memories and gradually forgot all they had known. Culture in this way perpetuates the sin of forgetfulness by not only forgetting but re-programming children to believe certain things and know a certain way. The wrong deeds enacted by humankind come from the lack of knowledge and memory on how to behave properly. Life becomes a purposeful search for knowledge and truth in an attempt to be free from sin.

In both Biblical and Classical mythology, sin has two forms. The first is as an active choice. One chooses to do what is wrong before the Lord, to commit a murder, to turn away a stranger. When narrowed down to the person taking away all the outside influences, consequences or reactions, it is their choice to sin or not to sin. Continuing on in time from Aeschylus to Socrates, from the ‘Old’ to New Testament, sin moves beyond action into a state of being. It is permanent and unchanged by any action or passage of time. Man is intrinsically sinful. This is either because he cannot remember or because of an ancient wrong. It remains that part of being human is to be tainted with sin. There is no escaping this as there is also no escaping the consequence of sin, suffering. It follows that because to be human is to be sinful, to be human is to know suffering. It is comforting to believe there is a greater purpose to our pain, whether that be that we suffer to truth or we suffer to prove ourselves to God; but it is still suffering.

Suffering is a Human Condition

Suffering is a human creation. It is the curse of humankind, the constant, unending pain that plagues us in every aspect of our lives. Ever since the creation of man (Biblical direction here) a key component to every story is dissatisfaction and inharmony. The garden isn't a story without a snake. This is a characteristic of the human condition: that we all need (require) dissonance, rebellion, dissatisfaction to create any real stories or feel we have lived life to the fullest. That is what makes each story. Beautiful, happy, rich people make boring stories without some trauma in teh equation.
There are so many ways to suffer and we're coming up with new ones each day. At the same time, suffering is what drives us to better ourselves and our world. Dissatisfaction with myself is what motivates me to seek out new challenges and ways to improve upon myself. For me to be in a state of stagnation or stasis is to be suffering.
Imperfection and suffering go hand in hand and are both products of a fallen world. Does that mean that Eve and Adam were perfect? If they were, does that then mean that there is a perfect state to which we may return? I hope not. Heaven sounds like a dull place to me if it is really just harps, clouds and dead relatives. I have also said many times before that perfect people are boring. So it's not so much perfection that drives me on up achievement and excellence. In that case, my idea of heave would be a place of struggle and constant striving for that excellence in all aspect of being. It would be a place where no one is ever satisfied though joy is taken in every new accomplishment and there is always something new to learn. Hell then (while also being here on earth and other people) is static, dead time, the inability to learn new things and improve oneself. I think heaven then would be achieving truth without suffering to it. For now we do suffer to truth; and I want truth. I want knowledge and wisdom and if required I will suffer as much as it takes to achieve my goals.

From the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/05/books/05nort.html

December 5, 2005
350 Years of What the Kids Heard
By DINITIA SMITH
Before Harry Potter there was "Slovenly Peter."

Written by Heinrich Hoffmann and published in Germany in 1845, it is one of the best-selling children's books ever, translated into more than 100 languages. And what a piece of work it is. A girl plays with matches and suffers horrendous burns, on all her clothes "And arms, and hands, and eyes, and nose;/ Till she had nothing more to lose/ Except her little scarlet shoes." A little boy who sucks his thumb has his thumbs cut off by the Scissor Man.

And in the difference between Harry and Peter lies the lesson of children's literature, said Jack Zipes, general editor of the new Norton Anthology of Children's Literature, published this month by W. W. Norton & Company. "These works reflect how we view children, and something about us," said Mr. Zipes, 68, a professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, in a telephone interview from Minneapolis.

The anthology joins the 11 other definitive compendiums by Norton. It is one of the first modern, comprehensive, critical collections of children's literature. And it is intended not for children, but for scholars.

"It's a huge event, a real arrival of children's literature in academic studies," said John Cech, director of the Center for Children's Literature and Culture at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Although the academic study of children's literature is an exploding field, there are only a handful of Ph.D. programs in children's literature in English departments. One purpose of the anthology, said Mr. Zipes, is to encourage departments to add courses.

The anthology, 2,471 pages long and weighing three pounds, covers 350 years of alphabet books, fairy tales, animal fables and the like, and took Mr. Zipes and four other editors four years to compile. Some stories are reprinted in full, sometimes with illustrations; others are excerpted.

In it, the editors trace the history of juvenile literature from what is probably the first children's book, "Orbis Sensualium Pictus," an illustrated Latin grammar by Johann Amos Comenius published in 1658, up through works as recent as "Last Talk With Jim Hardwick," by Marilyn Nelson, which came out in 2001.

Most early children's books were didactic and had a religious flavor, intended to civilize and save potential sinners - albeit upper-class ones, since they were more likely to be literate. As today, publishers were shrewd marketers of their wares. When John Newbery published "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book," in 1744, he included toys with the books - balls for boys, pincushions for girls.

It is striking in the anthology to see the way certain forms cross cultures. Lullabies, for instance, have a nearly universal form, with elongated vowels, long pauses and common themes of separation, hunger, bogeymen, death - as if singing of these terrors could banish them from a child's dream world. One stunning entry is "Lullaby of a Female Convict to Her Child, the Night Previous to Execution," from 1807. "Who then will sooth thee, when thy mother's sleeping," the mother sings. "In her low grave of shame and infamy!/ Sleep, baby mine! - to-morrow I must leave thee."

The book traces the evolution of various works, including "Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top" from its origins as an African-American slave song, "All the Pretty Horses." That version ends with the horrifying image, "Way down yonder in the meadow lays a poor little lambie/ The bees and the butterflies peckin' out his eyes/ The poor little thing cries, 'Mammy.' "

The editors write that attitudes toward children began to change in the mid-18th century. In 1762, in his revolutionary work, "Émile; or, On Education," Rousseau wrote that children are intrinsically innocent and should be educated apart from corrupt society, a view later taken up by the Romantics. In the mid- to late-19th century, with the rise of the "isms," as Mr. Zipes put it - Darwinism, Freudianism, communism, Shavian socialism - children were recognized as people, and their literature became less heavily didactic.

Schools were established for the lower classes, and increased literacy created new markets for books. This was the golden age of children's literature, of Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll.

Throughout the text, in editors' notes and introductions, are tidbits about the hidden messages in the literature. "London Bridge Is Falling Down," say the editors, contains coded references to the medieval custom of burying people alive in the foundations of bridges.

But children's stories, especially fairy tales, have always been hiding places for the subversive. "The Griffin and the Minor Canon" by Frank Stockton is a condemnation of cowardice and social hypocrisy; "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde, a critique of the aristocracy.

In the late 1960's and early 70's, as the anthology demonstrates, children's stories began to be rewritten and children's literature was approached in a different way. Black writers like Julius Lester and Mildred Taylor came to prominence along with Latino and Native Americans authors. Nowadays, the boundaries between adult and children's fiction are disappearing. Nothing is taboo. Included in the anthology are both Francesca Lia Block's story "Wolf" (2000), about rape, and "The Bleeding Man" (1974), a story about torture by Craig Kee Strete, a Native American writer.
There is also a hefty selection of illustrations that parents may remember fondly - Sendak's wild things, Dr. Seuss's goofy animals, Babar the elephant king - as well as comics and science fiction, officially bringing those genres into the canon. The book also includes the full text of the play "Peter Pan," never before published in the United States, as far Mr. Zipes knows.

Notably absent, however, is Harry Potter. That was because the cost of excerpting the Potter books was too high, Mr. Zipes said. Besides that, he said, "the Harry Potter books are very conventional and mediocre."

"The plots are in the tradition of the schoolboy novel," he said, citing "Tom Brown's School Days," which was published in 1857.

Mr. Zipes called the Potter books, "the ideological champions of patriarchal society," adding: "They celebrate the magical powers of a boy, with a girl - Hermione - cheerleading him. You can predict the outcome."

Never mind, though. Harry Potter is doing just fine.

The biggest question I have about the Oresteia is what it would have looked and sounded like to watch a performance. I know no one can answer this question - actually I would encourage anyone who wants to because I'm sure with some imagination you could come up with something fabulous. But that is my question. Especially in relation to the chorus, did they sing it, shout it, simply speak it? It is so hard to look back in time and wonder, not that it's hard for my mind, I can come up with tons of images of what it might have looked like, but it's hard on my curiosity which is dying to have a way to discover the answer.

Praise to Allah

I wanted to tell Abdulmajeed that I love those songs you sent to Professor Sexson. I thought they were very beautiful and I enjoy listening to them. If you have any other suggestions of similar music or similar artist I would love to know. Thank you for sharing those songs!

All for Humanity

A Brave New World. I would recommend this book because it is disturbing. At first it seems almost silly, as well as unbelievable, but as one continues reading it becomes distressingly clear that there are some truths here about the condition of man. I can see how it relates back to Miranda's words: the initial sense of wonder when the savage leaves the pure innocent world of nature for the sparkling and glamourous world of men is presented fully in this book from that concept in the play. It was not a book I would want to read over again but I am glad I read it and one of my favorite passages comes from the ending.

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to line in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.”
There was a long silence.
“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.