Storytelling: Daughter of the Air (Week 14)

The Little Mermaid Statue in Denmark

She was just over two-hundred years into her service as a Daughter of the Air.  She was so close to earning her eternal soul that she could almost taste it, though her senses didn’t work the way they had before and she had little reason now to actually taste things.  Being ethereal was indescribable; it felt like being light as a feather yet having the weight of the world on your shoulders at the same time. 

She had watched over her prince during his lifetime.  He lived his life convinced that his bride was the maiden who saved him from that shipwreck all those years ago.  She had come to terms with that long, long ago.  In fact, she had come to appreciate his wife.  She took care of the prince and loved him dearly.  Both of them had mourned her when she had faded into the sea foam and appeared to die.  As she watched over the prince over the years, she came to realized that he had really cared for her during her short time on earth, despite the fact that things did not work out how she had hoped.  She still loved him, even though the prince had died long ago, but now she had come to realize that things had worked out for the best.  If she had married the prince like she originally wished, she never would have done all the good that she had achieved during her time as a Daughter of the Air. 

Her father and sisters were still alive and thankfully happy.  There were many, many children in the family now.  It made her smile to think of her father as a grandfather.  Though the normal lifespan of a mermaid was three hundred years, her family had packed as much love and memories into their time as possible.  Whenever it was possible, she tried to do as many good deeds around them as she could.  It was nice to just be around them, even if they were not aware of her presence.  Unfortunately, her grandmother had passed, fading into the sea foam.  Each year, though, her family celebrated her life. 

It was amazing to think that this incredible journey started so long ago on her fifteenth birthday, on her first journey to the surface.  She never could have imagined that her birthday would spark the search for love and ultimately the search for her soul.

Arthur's Note:

I partially chose to write about this story because I loved the Disney version so much as a child.  Now as an adult, I fought the original story so interesting.  I had heard that the ending of the original was really sad and depressing.  When I read it, though, I found it more hopeful than anything.  When writing my story, I wanted to really capture that.  So, I wrote it in the future, after she died and became a Daughter of the Air and had her reflect on her time on earth.  

Hans Christian Anderson - The Little Mermaid 

Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by H. P. Paull (1872).

Reading Eval.

At the beginning of the semester, I was shocked by how many reading options were available.  It definitely helped me find an interest in the material. 

I really enjoyed the Twenty-Two Goblins unit, which surprised me.  I think it was the fact that it turned out to be a trickster story that really interested me.  Those are always fun to read.  I also like reading about Ovid, though I had read some of the stories before for other classes. 

I don’t know that I really had much of a strategy when it came to the reading diaries.  I mostly tried to focus on the text.  Anytime something made me pause or left me wondering about something, I wrote it down.  I also wrote down a lot of quotes that caught my attention.

I think that this class has a really good balance.  I’ve taken online classes before, and this is the first one that I felt like I knew something about any of my classmates.  The writing part was really enjoyable to me without being overwhelming.  The readings sometimes felt a little long, but it was definitely manageable, especially with the variety of reading choices we had.

My advice would be to be flexible with your plan.  For one of the assignments, I listed out all the different readings that I would like to do, but I’m pretty sure that I ended up picking completely different units when the time finally came.  This is a really fun class and choosing what stories you read was a large part of that.  

Reflections (Week 15)

Overall, I think that this course really forced me to look at things in new ways and to understand things in different terms.  Both the Storybook project and the weekly storytelling assignments really helped me with this.  It required me to get creative and look for different perspective in my writing and my editing.  That was both what I learned most from the course and what I liked most about it.  Learning about all the different mythology was really fun and interesting.  It definitely helped me to understand things about society that I didn’t necessarily get before.  I think being able to look at things from new and different perspectives will be very useful in the future, not just in school but in work as well.  It is a really good way to go about problem solving.

Reading Diary B: Hans Christian Anderson (Week 14)

Illustration by Dulac

• “We must not imagine that there is nothing at the bottom of the sea but bare yellow sand.”  The story goes on to talk about all the things that live down, deep in the ocean.  It doesn’t really mention anything scary, but I imagine there are some extremely scary things down there.  It’s almost unfathomable.
• I loved the Little Mermaid growing up, so it is really interesting to see the differences between the original story and Disney’s version.  She is quiet in the original and also is uninterested in trinkets from shipwrecks.  Instead, she enjoyed flowers.  Also, her grandmother has a very large presence in the original. 
• She was not allowed to dress as she wanted. ““Pride must suffer pain,” replied the old lady. Oh, how gladly she would have shaken off all this grandeur and laid aside the heavy wreath! The red flowers in her own garden would have suited her much better”
• When the prince falls into the water, she is excited at first.  “she thought he would now be with her; and then she remembered that human beings could not live in the water, so that when he got down to her father’s palace he would be quite dead. But he must not die.” 
• The prince didn’t know that the little mermaid had saved him.
• Her sisters play a bigger role than expected. 
• I wonder how the grandma knows so much about things on land when she too is confined to the waters
• The story really is quiet sad.  And it’s not really the prince’s fault either. 
• The ending is sad, but it is actually a lot more hopeful than I expected.

Hans Christian Anderson - The Little Mermaid part 6

Reading Diary A: Hans Christian Anderson (Week 14)

Illustration in a collection of Anderson's Fairy tales

• The Princess and the Pea is a really interesting story, but it brings up some questions.  For example, why is it that sensitivity is the only way to tell if someone is a true princess?  That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.  I think it’s funny that the story ends by saying that it was a true story.
• I haven’t heard the story of the Emperor and the clothes before, but I was excited when I saw it in this unit.  I recently heard about it and I’ve been seeing and hearing it mentioned all over the place since then.  Now I finally get what it was all about!  Basically it is all about pride, and only a child is willing to be honest in spite of pride.
• “This is the black goblin’s fault, I am sure. Ah, well, if the little lady were only here with me in the boat, I should not care for any darkness.”
• So I suppose the tale of the Wicked Prince is about greed?  I’m surprised that God actually had any interaction.  I expected the prince to become ruined all on his own.  The fact that such a tiny gnat took down such a “mighty” prince is quite ironic.
• I didn’t realized that the story of the Little Match Girl was from Hans Christian Anderson.
• “Her father would certainly beat her”  Geez, that is intense.
• “ her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.”  I’m not really sure how I feel about this.  I’m not really crazy about this story.  It’s so sad.

Hans Christian Anderson unit

Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by H. P. Paull (1872).

Storytelling: A Poor Mortal (Week 13)

A 19th-century interpretation of Charon's crossing by Alexander Litovchenko.

Charon rowed.  And rowed.  And rowed.  That’s almost all that he did.  His arms had stopped throbbing hundreds of years ago.  Now, the years passed liked days to him.  The screams and wails of the lost souls had also partially deafened him.  Long ago, he had even been able to hear the distant click-clacking of the centaurs’ hooves from so far off circle of hell.  He couldn’t hear much other than the last lamentations of the sorrowful souls he carried across the river.  His beard and head had started greying long, long ago.  Now, his beard only had specks of its natural hue; instead, grey had taken over.  Both in age and appearance, he was an old man.  

Soon, he would have to find someone else to take over his responsibility as the ferryman.  Reflecting was not something he did often, but it was something that he felt was appropriate now that he would be relinquishing his position soon.  He had been alive for far too long to care to remember everything that had happened to him.  Even if he did desire to remember the occurrences that had taken place throughout the course of his post as ferryman, there were so, so many souls that he had taken, it was impossible to remember them all.  In fact, most of them blurred together.  Few souls had interested him during his millennia on the job.  He did vividly recall one soul in particular, though.  His name was Dante, and he was a soul Chiron had yet to take.  He was one of the handful of mortals who had venture down into the Underworld for some reason or another.  

From what he recalled, he was on a quest of some sort and was with a soul that he had previously taken across the river, a soul named Virgil.  In life, Virgil had an importance about him and a way of stirring things up.  In death, the same was true.  He claimed to be a guide to the mortal who had found his way to the ferry.  Charon tried to warn the mortal Dante that his ferry was not for the living, but neither he nor Virgil would heed his warning.  Instead the guide pushed Charon, urging him to let the mortal pass.  He stated something about the mortal’s passage being fated or willed or something along those lines.  Charon remembered deciding not to argue.  He remembered thinking that if it was that mortal’s fate to see the trials of hell, fate was cruel indeed.

Author's Note:

I decided to write my story about Charon's interaction with Dante and Virgil because it really stuck out to me while I was reading the unit.  I placed the story at some point after Charon's encounter with the two of them.  I thought that doing this would give an interesting perspective.  I also got the impression the Charon had seen a lot during his time, so I really wanted to play up his age and maybe his wisdom as well.

From the Gates of Hell and Charon section of the Dante's Inferno unit

Dante's Divine Comedy, translated by Tony Kline (2002).

Reading Diary B: Dante's Inferno (Week 13)

Nicola Consoni's Dante al Limbo

• I wonder how many Cantos there are in this.
• The Minotaur from Crete is in the seventh circle of hell.
• “When he saw us, he gnawed himself, like someone consumed by anger inside.”  Sounds like someone with intense emotional trauma.
• He weaves in the Greek mythology almost seamlessly.  He mentions Theseus and it doesn’t seem forced or awkward.
• “the world has often been overwhelmed by chaos.”
• “we near the river of blood, in which those who injure others by violence are boiled.”
• So our desires are what lead us to destruction and hell?
• For a little bit, I think that I got Chiron and Charon confused.
• Chiron was basically the leader of the centaurs?
• “Divine Justice here torments Attila.”  So he isn’t just taking on Greek mythology.  The word “divine” makes the torture sound righteous.
• “The foliage was not green, but a dusky colour: the branches were not smooth, but warped and knotted; there were no fruits there, but poisonous thorns.”  Sounds like a dark twist on Wonderland or something like that.
• It is super interesting that Dante refers to Virgil as “Master,” especially when Virgil is being considered such a massive sinner.
• 'O Capaneus, you are punished more in that your pride is not quenched: no torment would produce pain fitting for your fury, except your own raving.' That’s interesting.  So each person’s punishment is custom fit to them. 
• It is odd how Virgil talks of Jason.  It is as if he is this great and glorious person who somehow did something bad enough to send him to hell.  The language is both good and bad, which is interesting.  

Dante's Inferno unit

Dante's Divine Comedy, translated by Tony Kline (2002).