The Beauty Myth

The Cherokee speak the story of a young man: One day, while out hunting in the forest, the man came across a bear. He fired off arrow after arrow at the beast, but could not bring it down. Eventually the bear stopped running, and stood up, pulling the arrows out of his body and holding them towards the man. The hunter realized he had stumbled across a medicine bear, “protected by magic”. The bear, after promising he would do the man no harmed, led him back to his home. It was a cold winter,…

Dispersed all throughout the world, are different perspectives on how we came to be, these are known as creation stories. Two of the many, would be the Christian creation story, Genesis, and the Greek creation story. Between Greek and Genesis, they share traits that are akin, as well as traits that differ from each other. The three elements within the two stories are the settings, characteristics, and the religious beliefs or cultural values. Within the stories, there is a different perspective…

Myth telling is present in all types of cultures, mainly explain the scientific reasoning behind such things. As well as for scientific reasons each myth usually falls into align with representing information that collides with “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. The Chinese Myths, Yi the Archer and the Ten Suns” and “The Creation of the Universe “ follow both of these core concepts and also are so closely similar when introducing and explaining chinese mythology. Both these myths follow both the…

Every religion accounts for a story of creation and each is unique in its own way. In Judeo-Christian beliefs, there are two creation accounts which are distinct and describe how God created the earth, nature and mankind. Both creation accounts are found in the book of Genesis with a specific name for each. The cosmocentric account which describes how god created the heavens and earth in seven days and the anthropocentric account which allots for the creation of mankind and how the earth was…

Guilt and Innocence in The Stranger “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.” (Camus 3) The perplexing tale of Meursault, an emotionally detached and seemingly amoral young man living in Algiers, stands notoriously as the introduction to “the absurd.” Albert Camus coined this school of thought, using The Stranger as a mechanism for expressing…

The Strange Character of Meursault In what perhaps is Albert Camus’s most notable work, The Stranger, the main character Meursault can be considered as a vessel for the philosophy of existentialism, an idea prominent in the time period in which the novel was written. Though at first glance Meursault may come off as a simple, uncaring man, as the story progresses, the reader is able to see Meursault as a complex and intriguing person. While in the beginning of the book Meursault is…

In Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, it starts with a narrator looking through the local newspaper to find a personal advertisement that interests him, yet also frustrates him. The advertisement states that a teacher is looking for a student that is interested in saving the world, the narrator is frustrated because most of his young adult life he has been in search of such a teacher and it bothers him that one is finally looking for him. At first he is almost positive that this advertisement is phony,…

The Shinto religion is so simple yet so complex. There is no book of worship, no form of mass, and no single god. What people don’t know is that the worship of the kami is nearly endless. The kami are literally everywhere but they are nether omnipotent nor omnipresent. You can see this just by looking at Japanese shrines. You can find them on the side of the road, on top of mountains, or on islands. Kami are spirits or phenomena that the Shinto worship. For example; Kami of Rain, Wind kami,…

Creation narratives were used by ancient societies to help explain the world and to create a definitive beginning. These stories show that humankind had a deep-seated need to explain its origins and provide a self-identity to the people living in those societies. The cultural beliefs helped shaped the narratives and included a view of the social structure, and natural world thus shaping the landscape for ongoing generations. “The Sacrifice or Purusha” from the Rig Veda portrays Purusha as the…

or an invisible entity making the Earth from the back of a turtle is open to interpretation. Whatever the story may be, the similarities and differences are unnerving, to say the least, considering the varying cultures. Most of these creation myths tend to include animals functioning as some part of society, but their purpose depends on the story. For example, "How The World Was Made" depicted animals as helpers of Maheo, the god of the story, who found land and for lack of a better word…