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.