The Mythical Transformation - Book Report/Review Example

The Mythical Transformation It is natural that much early literature was devoted to stories of character changes which are quite universal to human beings. After all, early writers were philosophers keen on examining the human condition. As human beings, we seek to explain our environment and our place in it. Early storytellers provided entertainment and life lessons for their audiences, who found the denouements quite satisfying. For example, fairy tales are classic myths. The story of The Tortoise and the Hare, one of Aesop’s fables, is one that children love, because they get it right away. “Slow and steady” wins the race. In this kind of myth, it is the reader who changes as he or she begins to understand the story. The massage is two-fold. The surface message is that we should not become so overconfident that we fail by being too sure of success. The rabbit learns this by losing the race. The reader, however, learns that things may look like the outcome is certain, but unless we consider all the alternatives we can easily be wrong. It looked as if the rabbit would surely win that race, but we failed to consider the rabbit’s character traits. The tortoise did not win the race: the rabbit lost it. Perseverance paid off for the tortoise, because he made no assumptions. The rabbit lost, because he assumed he could not lose. The lessons we find in our literature are often crucial to development as we grow. We take these lessons and apply them to our own lives, often without having to make the very same mistakes as the characters about whom we read. Of course, this is why, over time, children seem to know more at a younger age than their parents. They do. It is said that a smart person learns from experience, while a genius learns from the experiences of others. Often in myth, we do not directly see the change in the character, but we project it upon him as we do with the hare. We learn that his flagrant disregard for insuring his margin of error over the tortoise is what leads his to lose the race, and we assume that he has learned a valuable lesson from this. Over and over again we find one story in myth of a poor person finding great riches and these riches do not bring happiness. The pearl, by Steinbeck, is one such story. A very poor fisherman, Kito, who is part of a downtrodden social group, tries to get help when his child becomes sick. His wife prays that they find a pearl to help them pay for the doctor, whereupon he opens an oyster and finds a great pearl worth of untold wealth. Instead of bringing prosperity, this great pearl brings them more trouble as people around them are envious and many are plotting to steal it. This pearl nearly destroys them before they finally get rid of it. The child has been killed by trackers trying to steal the pearl, and though they are even more poor than before, having lost their home and boat, they have learned that instant riches will not bring them happiness. They throw the pearl, which has brought them great pain, back into the ocean. It is a sad story that one can interpret in many different ways as far as the inner lesson is concerned. John Steinbeck was a master of painting the human condition just as it is. He created very real characters and showed human nature with all its foibles, both good and bad. In this story he showed how the people of Kino’s village would likely react to him finding such wealth. We can look at this story and see how things could have been different. It is Kino’s need to get the best price for the pearl which causes some of the problems. The original reason for his Juana’s (his wife) prayer was to have money to pay the doctor, but after finding this pearl, Kino has great dreams for their future. Greed rears its ugly head. While the pearl buyers banded together to cheat Kino, they offered an example which Kino could possibly have followed: strength in numbers. If Kino had decided to share the wealth with all of his people, and not just been making plans for how it would benefit his family, he might have drawn together enough people to insure that it was sold for a good price. The people, themselves, were too oppressed to band together to help Kino without some kind of leadership. Alone, with only his brother willing to help, Kino has no chance. In life we often do not count our blessings. We are simply too concerned with what we do not have to treasure what we do have. The secret to happiness is not embodied within the fabulous wealth that the pearl represents, but it is within ourselves. That fabulous wealth brings with it a whole new set of problems, so that it cannot make us happy all by itself. We must find happiness within ourselves, and simply nurture it ourselves. Steinbeck’s couple suffered greatly because Kino could not let go of the promise of great wealth, whether by selling the pearl for less or sharing it. Finally, after losing everything, he throws it back into the ocean. The story of the pearl is social commentary. The oppressed group of which Mino is a member cannot seem to band together to improve their status, and each, including Kino, only sees their own situation. This oppressed group outnumbered the elite oppressors, but they were conditioned to suffer by all facets of their lives, including religion. At the end of the story little has changed for the better. Kino and Juana have learned that they can do little alone, but we see no indication that they might band together with their fellows in the future. They simply get rid of the pearl which they blame for all their troubles. As often happens, the major transformation happens in the reader, who can see all this, not being actually involved. Greek mythology often dealt with the problems of human existence and attempted to identify the causes. Men’s problems were often blamed upon the gods, but we do see lessons learned by the characters and transformations do take place, sometimes even in the gods, themselves, which are depicted as very human-like with super powers. In the Odyssey, Odysseus learns many lessons, but the biggest lesson is learned by the suitors who are eating all the food and have taken up residence in the palace. For their assumption that Penelope will eventually have to admit that Odysseus is dead and marry one of them costs them all their lives. Our hero, being a true hero of the time, undergoes transformation throughout his journey home, but it is less than we might expect as readers, because he is a classic hero. Odysseus does learn from each of his, or his crew’s, mistakes, and these add up to a him becoming a mature character at the end. However, we see no moment of transformation where he becomes enlightened. In some ways, this is also true of our lives. We seldom have those moments of epiphany where we suddenly change, but over the years most of us learn lessons which, taken together, help us to mature and make us very different from who we were starting out. In “The Odyssey” as a Psychoanalytic Guide” Dany Nobus (2006) explores this slow transformation of Odysseus over his long journey home as a parallel for psychoanalytic exploration, such as Freud developed. Freud, himself, often pointed out the need for introspection in order to explore our own learning journey, and proposed that we could fix things by chasing down the causes of our personality defects. Brenda Whitney, on the other hand, sees Odysseus’s journey as an example of the theme of mentorship. She notes that the man whom Odysseus leaves to teach his son and care for his household does a fairly poor job of it, while Athena is the true mentor of the tale as she helps Odysseus to overcome all difficulties, including those caused by his own character flaws and to finally reach home, reclaim his family and kingdom by destroying all those who would take it. While his transformation took twenty years and the man is not really totally different from the hero who started out, Odysseus is now mature and has incorporated all the many lessons he learned on his journey. In all of the great literature we can find character transformations, because they are central to human development. We grow and learn or we fail. Has the hare learned anything About his foolishness? Maybe not, but the reader did. Steinbeck’s Kino and Juana do not learn as much as the reader does, though they certainly suffer more. However, there are more lessons in this story than the simple transformation of Kino’s character. In the truly great myth by Homer, our hero is transformed, but so slowly that we hardly notice, though we, as readers, learn those same lessons as he does from the stories. The most profound statement we can get from Homer’s work is that we all learn and change over time, and if we pay attention, we change for the better, maturing and growing wiser. Aesops Fables: A Classic Illustrated Edition (Classics Illustrated) 1999,(Hardcover)by R. and Higton, B. Ash Homer, fl. 850 B.C. The Odyssey of Homer; translated by S.H. Butcher and A. Lang. The Harvard classics, edited by Charles W. Eliot. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14. Vol. 22, of 51. Nobus, Dany. "Polymetis Freud: Some Reflections on the Psychoanalytic Significance of Homers Odyssey." Comparative Literature Studies 43.3 (2006): 252-68. Steinbeck, John, Penguin (Non-Classics); John Steinbeck centennial ed. (1902-2002) edition (January 8, 2002) Whitney, Brenda. "Mentors: Benevolent Fools Or Goddesses of Power?" Critical Quarterly 46.3 (2004): 111-5. Read More