Students will create a 2 page-long typed response to one of three review prompts. Responses must be in MLA format.

Purpose:

• Explore in writing what you have read and what we have presented in the modules.

Instructions:

• Reply to only 1 of 3 topics/questions located below.
• Students are to submit their assignment by March 8, 11:59 p.m., using the submission link on this page.
• Use supporting evidence from texts/videos found in Modules 1-5. However, if you use a quote, please keep it no longer than two sentences.
• Restate the chosen topic/question in the first few sentences of your response.

Topic/Questions:

1. Consider your thoughts on consciousness, and analyze how one’s identity can be shaped/influenced by any of the discussed myths, legends, etc. we have read and one’s surrounding culture.

Consciousness

The average human does not constantly consider consciousness but consciousness is constantly present for the average human. When thinking about consciousness, we cannot put a physical, scientific aspect on the theory. The conscious mind is something to be conceptualized and interpreted based on the human experience. The more consciousness is tasked to carry a physical portion of the brain, the harder it will be to interpret the mind. There will always be an issue to define exactly what the conscious is, but it is always existent. The brain does produce consciousness, but consciousness cannot produce brain functions, not anything physical. The mental states are not physical as they are a product of consciousness. If there is a shared consciousness of the individual, there is a creation of the self.

As long as we are alive, consciousness will always receive information provided by our life experiences, then produce our thoughts and imaginations. The totally unconscious person also may be credited with memories. He also can be said to have skills, including purely mental skills such as an ability for mental arithmeticA totally unconscious person may be credited with likes and dislikes, attitudes and emotions, current desires, and current aims and purposes. He may be said to have certain traits of character and temperament. (Armstrong 56) Consciousness is similar to a storage unit, it has a multitude of items that it constantly puts away and then pulls out. Items are constantly going in and out. The gloriousness of consciousness is the level of production. We are given access to memories, access to imagination, and access to intelligence through even minimal consciousness.

Please read the following on the theory of

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Culture & Identity

Now that we have a better understanding of the mythological influence on young minds, let us look at identity and how we see/develop ourselves. View the video below:

Social Identity Theory

Students will create a 2 page-long typed response to one of three review prompts. Responses must be in MLA format.

Purpose:

• Explore in writing what you have read and what we have presented in the modules.

Instructions:

• Reply to only 1 of 3 topics/questions located below.
• Students are to submit their assignment by March 8, 11:59 p.m., using the submission link on this page.
• Use supporting evidence from texts/videos found in Modules 1-5. However, if you use a quote, please keep it no longer than two sentences.
• Restate the chosen topic/question in the first few sentences of your response.

Topic/Questions:

1. Compare and contrast any one of the two creation myths (or both) to any other myth, legend, epic, fairy tale, etc. we have read.

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Aztec Creation Myth

The Aztec Empire, c. 1345-1521, covered most of northern Mesoamerica. The historic region of Mesoamerica comprises the modern-day countries of northern Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, and half of Mexico. Watch the video below for an introduction to the Aztec Empire.

Keep in mind the ideals and experiences of the Aztec people as you read the following:

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Fairytales

Any reader of fairy tales will recognize certain patterns in the tales that are also found in world mythology. Characters are miraculously conceived, heroes and heroines descend to places that resemble mythic underworlds, and young heroes go on dangerous quests and are detained by femme fatales or challenged by monsters. Certainly, those connections between myth and fairy tale suggest an article and symbolic language common to the human psyche. On the other hand, they also suggest a conscious attempt on the part first of oral storytellers and later of the literary collectors who gathered and studied those oral tales to make use of the old sacred stories, motifs, and symbols in a still moralistic but generally secular context, with particular versions reflecting the moral and mannerly priorities of particular societies. In fact, it is difficult to differentiate between the sacred world of myth and the moralistic world of the fairy tale.

Leeming, David. Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford University Press, 2009.

The Elves and the Envious Neighbor
Japan

Once upon a time, there was a certain man, who, being overtaken by darkness among the mountains, was driven to seek shelter in the trunk of a hollow tree. In the middle of the night, a large company of elves assembled at the place; and the man, peeping out from his hiding place, was frightened out of his wits. After a while, however, the elves began to feast and drink wine, and to amuse themselves by singing and dancing, until at last the man, caught by the infection of the fun, forgot all about his fright, and crept out of his hollow tree to join in the revels.
When the day was about to dawn, the elves said to the man, “You’re a very jolly companion, and must come out and have a dance with us again. You must make us a promise, and keep it.”

So the elves, thinking to bind the man over to return, took a large wen that grew on his forehead and kept it in pawn; upon this, they all left the place and went home.

The man walked off to his own house in high glee at having passed a jovial night and got rid of his wen into the bargain. So he told the story to all his friends, who congratulated him warmly on being cured of his wen. But there was a neighbor of his who was also troubled with a wen of long-standing, and, when he heard of his friend’s luck, he was smitten with envy, and went off to hunt for the hollow tree, in which, when he had found it, he passed the night.

Elves, mistaking him for their former boon companion, were delighted to see him, and said, “You’re a good fellow to recollect your promise, and we’ll give you back your pledge.”

So one of the elves, pulling the pawned wen out of his pocket, stuck it onto the man’s forehead, on the top of the other wen which he already had. So the envious neighbor went home weeping, with two wens instead of one.

Source: A. B. Mitford, Tales of Old Japan, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan and Company, 1871), pp. 276-77