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The woods represent the journey into the “dark world.” This is like the darkness found in the warren where snares were set nearby. There’s an ominous feeling found there, which is known to contain various dangers of varying magnitude.

Jack has uncontrolled desires such as when he decides to go up the beanstalk to the land of giants solely on the basis of a bet that he wouldn’t go back up and steal a golden harp. Result of this was that the giant comes down stalk and starts hurting people in the world of “small” (normal size) people. Goldilocks loved sweets and is easily tempted to stray from the path. This results in problems with granny.

My favorite song was the “into the woods” theme. It has literally been stuck in my head all weekend and it’s kind of pissing me off. I liked it though because, besides being catchy, it also had inputs from each individual journey that the several “separate” fairy tailers were setting out on. Like “into the woods” “-to go to the festival,” “-to grandma’s house we go,” and those on the separate journeys chimed in to sing their lines that declared their journey.

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Campbell says that the function of life is to survive essentially by eating another life. Vegetarians do it too. They eat living vegetables.

 Explain 3 chars from watership dwn Fiver is fool and yet somewhat of magician since he predicts and foresees danger. Hazel is caretaker and wise. Bigwig is warrior since he is strong, his convictions are solid and stable; he takes orders and acts.

Monomyth stages of wd thru and including belly of whale In watership down, there’s the call: Fiver says they need to get away immediately. This call is looked at initially as ridiculous. Others come to realize that fiver is very serious about the matter. They embark on the beginning of the journey away from the nearing danger. Dark new world was forest and unfamiliar lands. Belly of whale was near-death of Bigwig 

A man goes far to find out what he is= beginning of journey. He sees natural shapes in unnatural light=the dark world where journey takes place. The man “falls” and thinks failure nears. But in the end the mind enters the self and god into mind=he has found the boon which he may now bring back with him to his “normal” world.

“My Comfort” (poem8- Alliterisen)

Of its towers most seldom obsess

My mind it brings ease- with pics, songs, and movies

In it the ocean e’er rolling

Pristine vistas its canvasses holding

It needs not all that much room

Its drums and guitar play my tune

So small, yet so vast what it may do

I won’t eat it… will you? (poem7- Lanturne)

Fish,

Uncooked.

Like parasites?

Don’t.

The instrument’s call (Poem6- Nonet)

Resting Silently ‘gainst the wall in the corner

Silently lending song to ming

Pleading to my hands, “Just one”

Though time I know’ll slip by

But my time it takes

And song it makes

Strumming grace

My hands

Play

failed call–Roundelet

A fine failure

Enlisted, yet inside not buying

A fine failure

Efforts present but incomplete

Trying, trying

Though to myself only lying

A fine failure

the call

A “call” is made to a protagonist of any good story. This holds true in the Odyssey, Watership Down, The Matrix, Star Wars, and many, if not any other basic storyline. This is important in order for the reader, viewer, or listener to make a personal connection early on in order to gain and keep interest. In the Odyssey, you find that Odysseus is driven to get home, once and for all. After the long war on Troy, time and time again he runs into quandaries that prevent him from swiftly returning home. Odysseus could very easily have stayed and enjoyed the blissful life with the Lotus Eaters or could have given in to the beautiful song of the sirens, but he does everything he can to press on and make his way back to his wife and son. In Watership Down, the call faced is to flee their lifelong home, where generation upon generation of their ancestors lived their lives. And what makes it even more difficult is that no one knows if it is truely necessary to leave (with the exception of Fiver himself) since this call is based solely upon a gut feeling of a fellow rabbit.

 

In life, everyone must respond to “calls.” Calls may be welcomed cordially or, in the case of many novels and cinematic adventures, with critisicm or condemnation… at first. In my life, an example of this might be as simple as trying to decide on my major as I progressed through high school. Throughout middle school I enjoyed creating art works of many sorts very much, and for years I had an interest in seeking a furthered art education. I was never a bad student in other classes though all the while. My 9^th grade year in high school I took a biology course and, with little effort, managed to get other students in my class to despise me for destroying grading curves. At the end of the semester, my teacher approached me and asked what I was planning on doing with my future, and when I replied with my intentions of pursuing art, she told me I should think about going into a science field. That wasn’t what I wanted to do though. So the next year I took my first chemistry course, and the same events took place throughout that class as did in my first bio class. I started to wonder if maybe sciences might not be such a terrible calling after all. I found myself increasingly interested in the field and took advanced bio and chem courses later and did indeed manage to change my mind. Now my course of study is bio/pre med and I’m quite happy with my decision.

From  101 Great American Poems, I found a poem by Rober Frost that seemed to echo the way I felt about my decision. Called Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, the poem makes note of someone who stops in the middle of the woods, darkness and cold all around him, and finds beauty in the surroundings. Similarly, I was able to stop in my life and realize the beauty in subjects that I once only wanted to get through and leave behind. and now that I found this, I know that I too have “miles to go before I sleep.”

the shitload of concepts synth

Through this class I’ve quickly grown to understand a new perspective from which literature, stories, and poetry alike may be viewed. By following the ideas presented by the monomyth, effective, thought-evoking stories and poems all become strikingly similar since they all closely obey some simple guidelines. If the story teller, writer, or artist wishes to convey a tale or represent an idea with conviction, the reader must be taken in by the story. Simply enough, a call, first refused, must be made, followed by a “journey” of some type, and finally the account is completed with a return and usually a new and more thoughtful perspective or rejuvenation of a sort. Within all of this, basic archetypes are represented through characters or ideas, making the reader more able to relate on a personal level.

blog entry #3

In the Monomyth, a character begins with a stale life, likely living by the same dominant archetype for quite some time. This is disrupted somehow by an event of some sort and a calling to action. The hero first rejects this calling since the current dominant archetype attempts to stay in control and maintain the consistancy of life so well kept over time. Next, something occurs that really manages to shake things up and set gears into motion. Light begins to be shed onto other qualities and archetypes of the hero. The hero at this point chooses to attack the task at hand without looking back. As in Watership Down, Hazel, Fiver, and Bigwig decide that the danger afoot is real and that they must move away from the warren. At this point, the journey of the hero begins, and characteristics (archetypes) rarely previously descriptive of the hero are forced outward in order for the hero to successfully understand and conquer each feat or task at hand. This is why, by the end of the story, the hero appears changed. Along the journey, pettiness in life is set aside and all archetypes begin being displayed to greater degrees such that the hero “hatches” into maturity.

 In the movie Wanted, the characer James McAvoy plays, Wesley Gibson, is timid and full of fanxiety problems that he is plagued by on a day-to-day basis. He displays characteristics of Innocent and Orphan archetypes and shadow archetypes. This is before he realizes his potential. Upon having a gun held to his head and told to shoot the wings off a fly, his anxiety kicks in and he suddenly find himself able to concentrate with such intimacy on the fly that by the time he finds himself pulling the trigger a single time he has actually already fired several times. The fly is found without wings. Gibson had no idea that he could ever activate his mind in such a way and accomplish a feat such as this previously. His mind begins to be freed after this incident and he begins learning more and more about himself and other things he is capable of. This is analagous to the way a hero on his or her journey begins to unlock characteristics and archetypes of theirs that he/she never knew existed within his/herself. Similarly, more can more easily be illucidated and discoverd within one’s self after a breakthrough in thought process has been made.

On a personal note, I wasn’t surprised by my HMI scores to find that the Fool archetype still came up among those dominant in myself. However, it was interesting to learn which others existed in a dominant manner as well. I found that Seeker, Lover, Creator, and Caregiver are among the slightly-less-dominant of my displayed archetypes. The archetype test we took before only set forth a single dominant archetype for its user, and offered little other information on onesself.

Works Cited:

Adams, Richard. Watership Down. 1972. New York:

Scribner, 2005.

A Fool’s Shadow (Poem #3- Katauta)

Wanting; indulging.

Desire-driven carelessness.

One’s self ever neglected.