World On The Turtle's Back Myth Analysis

World on the Turtle’s Back Myth Analysis In the Myth, “World on the Turtle’s Back” the Iroquois tell a creation story that explains the world, explains their customs, helps give the Iroquois people a guide to follow and it instills a sense of awe in the reader. Throughout the story there are several instances in which the reader is awestruck and has to simply go along with the tale, there are no explanations for some of the events that occur and the reader can only infer what the explanations are. Examples of this include, the Sky-World, the magical turtle, and the corn, beans, squash, and tobacco growing from the mother’s ears The first great example of an awesome, unexplained occurrence is the Sky-World. The story opens with a description of this world, “Above the Ocean was a great void of air… far above this unpeopled world, there was a Sky-World” (Pg 25). This is how the reader becomes introduced to this strange, heavenly world, and without explanation of how it came to be we are told a story of man and wife who is burdened with a child. In this utopia there is also a population; the inhabitants, gods who, “were like people- …show more content…
This large turtle becomes the base for all of the Earth. “The woman took the tiny clod of dirt and placed it on the middle of the middle of the great sea turtle’s back” (26). The woman, who had grabbed a clump of tree root and dirt had the idea to let it grow on the turtle’s back, so she places it, and begins to circle it on the Turtle’s back, moving in the way the Earth rotates around the Sun. From the turtle’s back the Earth grows, the idea of the Earth growing from a Turtle’s back, and doing so almost immediately with only sea water and sunlight is another moment when the reader has to continue to read without questioning why it’s happening and just go with the