The World On The Turtle's Back Analysis

“The World on the Turtle’s Back” Analysis Essay

“The World on the Turtle’s Back” is an Iroquois myth that attempts to explain the creation of the world through the usage of fable and folktale-like elements. It also utilizes many different forms of language and expression in order to create a coherent story that feels surreal while maintaining an almost wistful atmosphere. All in all, the myth accomplishes its goal of “teaching” about the creation of the world and the Iroquois culture while employing unique, yet appropriate usage of language. The genre of the story is a myth, as it states in the title. Due to this, we can identify many usages of elements commonly found in myths within this tale. One of which is the presence of a divine force in some parts of the passage. The “Sky World” and “Its People” as well as the “Great Tree” all point to a common theme of divinity and its presence or impact in the creation of our world. The Strange man who appears and creates the twins that in turn created the creatures of our world is another example of a divine force, as he is speculated to be the “West Wind. Another common theme in myths that is integrated into this one is the fact that myths usually strive to explain something in the world by the telling of a story. In this particular account, the creation of our whole earth and the …show more content…
From the very beginning we see that the myth starts with, “In the beginning” and if we scour throughout the text we will find many usages of transitional phrases such as: ”as they grew up” or “And finally”. These suggest the information is arranged in chronological order where we start before the creation of anything and end with the world as we know it today. This in it of itself is a usage of language, but if we choose to look deeper we can find much