A World On The Turtle's Back Analysis

There are similarities and differences from the two stories, “A world on the turtle’s back”, written by the Iroquois Indians, and “Thor’s Hammer”, written by Norse mythologists. In the story “A world on the turtle’s back”, a woman who fell into void emptiness from a tree, & ended up giving birth to two completely opposite minded people. In “Thor’s Hammer” Loki, who's an avid trickster, was crying for his life to Thor after cutting his wife’s hair off.

A similarity I saw in the two stories was push and shove. In the story, “A world on the turtle’s back”, the left handed twin is ridiculously impatient and wants to be born immediately rather than the right handed twin, who is more laid back, and humbly waits untill he is ready to be born. While in the womb, “...The right-handed twin [told] him not to, saying that he would kill their mother...” but that didn't put an end to his stupidity. The right handed twin …show more content…
When comparing the two stories, there are many differences. One difference that I noticed is the level of the badness of the punishment. In “A world on the turtle’s back”, the punishment isn't as bad as it is in “Thor’s Hammer”. In “A world on the turtle’s back”, the right handed twin kills his left handed twin to seize the havoc he was creating. “...The right-handed twin picked out the deer antler, and with one touch he destroyed his brother. And the left-handed twin died, but he died and didn’t die.”. After all the bad the left handed twin caused, such as killing his mother, he ends up under the world where he “...still lives and reigns…”. The level of punishment is not very harsh. Nevertheless, in “Thor’s Hammer”, the punishment for cutting off Sif’s hair was death to Loki. Loki cut off Thor’s wife’s hair as a trick to her but when Thor found out, he instantly “...threatened to break every bone in his body...”. This shows how drastically the badness of punishment