Post #11: Greek Tragedy Festival

Post #10 It's All Greek to Me PPT

Post #9: Canongate Myth Series Prompted Writing

2009, Form B: Many works of literature deal with political or social issues. Choose a novel or play that focuses on a political or social issue. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the author uses literary elements to explore this issue and explain how the issue contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

Ragnarok and the Real World

In Ragnarok: The End of the Gods by A.S Byatt, the thin girl who reads about Ragnarok finds parallels between the chaos and bloodshed of World War II and the horrific destruction in Ragnarok. Through the thin girl’s commentary as a framing device, Byatt retells the story of Ragnarok from the point of view of an innocent child who is well versed in stories. Byatt uses the genre savviness of the narrator to warn that unless humanity learns to overcome their baser instincts, humanity will cause their own downfall.

The thin girl, who serves as the narrator of the book and provides much commentary on the story of Ragnarok, is a character who, due to her consistent exposure to myths and fairy tales, can easily predict the story of Ragnarok. She describes the Ases, the Nordic gods, as brutish and bad, and thus is not surprised when the Ases all die in Ragnarok. She notes that although the Ases are aware of their impending doom due to the prophecy of Ragnarok, they do little to stop it. For example, in the prophecy of Ragnarok, the Fenrir wolf is prophecized to eat and consume Odin whole. When Fenrir is actually born, however, the Ases committed certain actions that ensure Fenrir would become their enemy. The Ases had decided to painfully imprison Fenrir by binding the wolf with magical ribbons. This would cause Fenrir to hate the Ases and thus attack them once Fenrir was freed. Had the Ases simply killed Fenrir when the wolf was a small cub, or had the Ases treated Fenrir with respect and mercy, Fenrir would have not hated the Ases and likely would not have attacked and eat Odin.

The shortsightedness the Ases had with Fenrir was applicable to many other important figures in Ragnarok. The Ases threw the Midgard Serpent, who was prophecized to kill Thor, into the ocean which had plenty of food for the serpent to eat and thus grow stronger. The Ases ostracized Loki, who was prophecized to be the eventual herald of Ragnarok, due to his cunning nature and would eventually imprison him and torture him endlessly by having venom drip into his eyes while he is imprisoned. Each and every one of these instances was a case where, had the Ases applied a bit of long term thinking, or if the Ases had elected to show a bit of kindness, the Ases would not have made an enemy that would cause their downfall in Ragnarok. The brutish, arrogant, or as the thin child says, bad nature of the Ases were precisely what led to their downfall.

This parallels with the World War II era that the thin girl lives in. After the end of the first World War, then known as the Great War, the victors of World War I forced Germany to make massive reparations to the victors as punishment. This would lead to not only incredible humiliation for Germany, but also would lead to a massive economic depression for Germany and would create a culture of despair and resentment in Germany. This very culture of despair and resentment enabled Adolf Hitler to seize control of Germany and create the Third Reich. Soon afterwards, Hitler would set his sights on global conquest and would spark World War II, creating an alliance of other nations who similarly felt cheated or humiliated by the end of World War I called, the Axis Powers. Had the original victors of World War I, who would become the Allied Powers and opposed the Axis Powers, elected to instead treat Germany and the other future Axis Power members with mercy and compassion, then Germany would not have gained its culture of resentment which allowed dictators like Hitler to thrive. The Allied Powers, however, like the Ases had succumbed to their baser desires of greed and revenge. Which would lead to their own Ragnarok in the form of World War II.

Granted, there are some differences between the Ases and Ragnarok versus the Allied Powers and World War II. Unlike the Ases, the Allied Powers would not be utterly annihilated in World War II. The Allied Powers would, in fact, emerge victorious. There was, however, a period of time where it truly seemed the Allied Powers would be destroyed as Britain remained as the last Allied stronghold against an approaching Axis tide. This period of time is the period of time that the thin girl lives in, a period of time where every day Britain appeared to be closer to falling. For the thin girl, and all other British people living at the time, their Ragnarok truly seemed to be unfolding before their very eyes.

Due to the intervention of the US, as well as a few strategic mistakes made by Hitler, however, Britain would not fall and the Allied Powers would emerge victorious. From their experiences from the first World War, the Allied Powers would show the Axis powers far greater mercy, ensuring that a third World War would not occur.

The story of Ragnarok and the hubris and arrogance of the Ases, juxtaposed with the real events of World War II, serves as a cautionary tale for humanity. Too foten, we are eager to make choices that would provide immediate gratification and appeal to our baser instincts. Whether it be choices as mundane as binge watching for ten hours on Netflix to choices as important as investing in high profit ventures such as housing, we fail to see the long-term consequences of these immediate gratification actions: Binge watching on Netflix means less time to study and owuld caus

e sleep deprivation and poor grades. Investing in housing when the real-estate business is a bubble that is about to pop would only contribute to the next great financial disaster when such a bubble inevitably pops.

Reflection

     For this assignment, we were allowed to select an open question prompt and answer it using our Canongate Myth book. For my Canongate myth book, Rangarok: The End of the Gods by B.S Hyatt, I chose the 2009 Open Question prompt, which said, "Many works of literature deal with political or social issues. Choose a novel or play that focuses on a political or social issue. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the author uses literary elements to explore this issue and explain how the issue contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot."

    I had anticipated that I would get a 7 on the essay, as though I believed that my essay offered "insight and understanding of the literary elements the author uses", my "analysis [was] less thorough, less perceptive and... less specific in supporting detail". My teacher roughly agreed with me, giving me a score of 7.5. She believed that my essay was almost 8 material but felt like I went too out of context of the book near the end of my essay when I talked about how World War II served as a parallel with the Ases.

     Of note with this task is that we were given a chance to prepare a thesis statement ahead of time for this assignment, and were given more freedom to select a prompt that we felt would suited our book. This was certainly a factor into helping me focus my essay, as I had time to prepare a general outline of my essay. Overall, my essay's score improved from the 5.5 it was before to the 7.5 it is now. I believe part of the factor into its improvement was that I tried to bring in outside knowledge into my essay to add complexity into it. I may have, however, added too much outside knowledge, which lowered my essay score