Blog #3
Myth Creation
Creating my first myth, "Tim: The First Accident", helped deepen my understanding of mythology from a more creative and personal aspect. When studying myths in past classes, we tend to focus on structure, symbolism, and meaning. Focusing more on literary devices and how each story reflects a certain group's worldview. When making my own myth, I realized how important every choice and symbolic piece is to the story, especially based on our own emotional or philosophical impulses. Writing the story forced me to try to explain why the world works in some way while creating new meanings. It allows us to try to answer life’s questions and curiosities, even ones often unanswered. It reminds me a lot of different superstitions or old-wives tales in different cultures or communities that often give warnings or explanations for things in life
Through this process, I understood myths not just as old stories or fable-like narratives teaching us things, but as flexible, evolving explanations for humans and the world around us. My myth began as a joke about an egg falling, but as I developed it, the egg became a symbol of fragility and creation. I think it truly shows how something small and accidental can lead to life and meaningful changes. This highlights how imperfection and accidents are essential parts of the human story. Personally, I wanted to convey a message to not take life too seriously, as you cannot control everything in your life.
This experience also changed how I’d approach teaching. Instead of having students just analyze myths, I’d invite them to create their own. When students write myths, they connect abstract ideas to personal and cultural meaning. It encourages creativity and critical thinking, while building real world connections. In my own life, it reminded me that mistakes and accidents often lead to learning and discovery. I feel this assignment further allows one to use their own creativity and reflect on myth making concepts to strengthen their own narrating ability.
Check Out my Myth Website:
Hello Briana,
ReplyDeleteI like how myths for the most part tell a story with a purpose. that purpose can be anything from a meaningful lesson or just simply something that someone told to pass the time, or it could even go as far as a collection of tales revolving one person or thing. the point is that myths are able to build onto themselves with as much story and information as they want. so it is interesting to see how such myths are made and maintained and even changed as time goes on and i think the way we made our myths over the course of a couple days and weeks helped us in doing that. and teaching a class of students with this activity would be interesting since different people like and are interested in different things and the purpose of the activity can be beneficial for them in the future.
Hey Briana!
ReplyDeleteThank you for bringing up structures. I am told I am a type A person, but for what it's worth, it’s true to the point that my first name starts with an A. But truly to be serious, I think with writing I fight being structured and being creative. It’s a constant battle because in my first creative writing class, we had a “free writing “ exercise where we wrote without stopping for 15 minutes. Easy right? Not. I stopped so many times my first time because of misspelling, and I ended up not writing much towards the prompt because I was stuck on mechanics. Structure essentially. I think this taught me about myself, but also my students and what I need to show them. So with this assignment, I feel like for those who aren't completely in the “create writing circle,” this is perfect to let the imagination run, but find a happy medium in wanting and needing a structure, because there is a structure to myths.
---- Anahise B.