Myth Essay 2 - Grade: B+ PDF

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Comparing another myth to a classical myth...

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April 14th 2018 CSLA:2016 Classical Mythology: Essay 2 The myth The World on the Turtle’s Back is an Iroquois creation myth. The Iroquois, a confederacy of five then later six native nations of Native Americans, has a rich background of mythology but as time has gone on many of their myth has been lost. Thankfully, many of their religious stories have been preserved, many of these being creation myths. Each village had its story teller that was responsible for learning all the stories by heart. No stories were allowed to be told during the summer months, and if the story teller violated this rule they would be destined to suffer greater evils. The World on the Turtle’s Back is an example of one of these enticing creation myths that reflect the rich culture of the Iroquois people. The myth begins with “in the beginning” a very common starter in creation myths. There was no land no creatures and no men, a sky world existed where the gods lived. In this sky world there was a man that had a wife that was pregnant and one day the two of them found a great tree whose roots sprouted from the ground of the sky world, one day the mans wife decided she wanted some bark from the great tree, the man accidentally tore a hole in the roots of this tree opening up a large hole in the sky world. All that could be seen below was the great ocean, the women fell through this hole barreling towards the great ocean, there are some discrepancies in whether the man pushed her because of her endless requests during her pregnancy or if she actually fell by accident. The woman tumbled to the great ocean below, but the birds saw this and began to form a raft to safely deliver her below. Once the women was safe and she had recovered from terror all she saw were the birds and the sea creatures, she swore she could go on no longer but the sea creatures came to her to help her, the women had some roots if the great tree still in

her hands from when she fell out the hole and tried to hoist herself back up. However, the women needed dirt and the sea creatures did their best to assist her diving as far as they could to help her. Finally, the muskrat retrieved a little bit of earth from the bottom of the ocean. The women then built the world on the turtles back. The women went on to give birth to a daughter and her and the daughter walked around the world as the sun moves and the world grew and grew. One day a man appeared, no one knew where he came from and the daughter knew she was destined to have children with him, the daughter expected twins but these twins quarreled with each other before they were even born. There was a left handed twin and a right handed twin, the right handed twin wanted to be born in the normal way that would not hurt his mother but the left handed twin wanted to born a different way, so he was born out of his mother’s armpit and killed her. These twins went on to dislike each other existence from then on. The myth states “the right handed twin was the one who did everything just as he should. He said what he meant, and he meant what he said…the left handed twin never said what he meant or meant what he said. He always lied and he always did things backward. As the years went on the twin’s disdain for each other continued to grow. The right handed twin created innocent animals like the deer and the left handed twin made the mountain lion. This trend continued and the left handed twin created good things while the left handed twin created the opposite every time. Eventually both the twins knew they would have to defeat one another if they wanted to go on they went through multiple attempts and finally one day the right handed twin defeated the left handed twin with a deer antler. The right and the left handed twins are commonly known in Iroquois myth as Sapling and flint, Sapling is the right handed and Flint is the left. This myth is in a way very similar to the Greek creation myth. Both the Iroquois and the Greeks were considered polytheistic because there are multiple gods such as sapling and flint

(the right and the left handed twins) just like Greek myth is polytheistic because there are multiple gods like Zeus and Kronos. In both of these creation myths there is the concept of unique creation of life in the Greek creation myth A bird with black wings named Nyx laid an egg in the void of darkness and nothingness. Eros, the god of love came, out of the egg and half of the egg turned into the sky and the other half into the earth. Eros named the sky Uranus and the earth Gaia. Uranus and Gaia fell in love and had children. One child, Kronus had many children, but ate them to stop from being overthrown. In The World on the Turtles Back there is a similar concept of a sky world differing from the actual world, the children are born from the sky woman’s daughter and man randomly appears, Sapling and Flint both create things, Sapling creates the good, Flint creates the bad. Both of these myths have very aggressive and very peaceful parts. The lesson that I drew from The World on the Turtle’s back is the concept of good and evil always existing in the world. There has to be a balance without the bad we would not be able to have the good but at the same time there is a way to outsmart evil, like when Sapling kills flint with merely a deer antler. I also think this story could be interpreted in a way as our conscious, since none of us are perfect we each have a right handed twin and a left handed twin on our shoulders and we cannot allow the left handed twin to take over and force us to lie and create evil for ourselves and the rest of the world. I also think that this myth could represent how the right handed twin even though he is born good can always turn into the left handed twin. After the right handed twin kills the left handed twin he grows angry when his grandmother calls him a murderer and is angry with him for killing his twin brother. In that part of the myth we see the right handed twin becoming a little evil himself.

Overall this rich cultured and lesson filled myth The World on the Turtle’s back shows great parallel’s to classical myth. There are many consistencies in myth across many cultures and this myth is a good example of this....