Coming soon:

The Qur'an and Things Fall Apart

Genesis

I. Summary

The Book of Genesis begins with the creation of “the heavens and the earth” (p. 8) and eventually man and woman. Adam and Eve are then cast out of the garden of Eden because they both eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. They give birth to two children, Cain and Abel. Cain murders his brother out of jealously, and God curses Cain and all of his descendants. Meanwhile, Adam and Eve have another child, Seth. Genesis then traces Seth’s genealogy down to Noah, at which point we receive the familiar story of Noah and the great Flood. After surviving the Flood, Noah’s genealogy is traced through his son Shem all the way to Abraham. Before this, in two small paragraphs, the story of the Tower of Babel is relayed, and men and women are scattered to all ends of the earth, speaking in languages unintelligible to each other.

God promises to Abraham that his descendants will be as countless as the stars. Abraham’s wife Sarah (Sarai) gives him a concubine, Hagar, by which to have a child. Thus Ishmael is born. Shortly after Ishmael’s birth, God blesses Sarah to conceive, though she has been barren, and she births their son Isaac, whose line the Covenant of Abraham will follow. Between the birth of Abraham’s sons, God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah because their citizens have been having homosexual “intimacies” (p. 23).

Isaac marries Rebekah, and they have two sons, twins, Esau and Jacob. While Jacob is younger, with the help of his mother he deceives Isaac, and the patriarchy extends through his line, not Esau’s. Jacob marries Leah and Rachel, daughters of Laban, Abraham’s brother’s (Nahor’s) grandson. By Leah, Rachel, and their respective concubines, Jacob has 12 sons and a daughter. The second youngest son, Joseph, is despised by his brothers, and he is sold into slavery in Egypt.

There, in Egypt, Joseph interprets the dream of the pharaoh, predicting seven years of abundance and seven years of famine, at which point the pharaoh makes Joseph the equivalent of second-in-command. When the famine strikes, Jacob, now Israel, sends his sons to Egypt to collect grain for food. Joseph recognizes his family, and eventually reveals himself to them. The family brings Israel and the rest of his family to live in Egypt, where Israel and eventually Joseph die by the end of the book. The book ends with the 11 sons and their families living abundantly in Egypt.

II. Response

Reading Genesis in this context was difficult for me. I tried to read always one step back, and think about the narrative and the devices at work. Still, I could not help but be impressed on a spiritual level. I think the bridge between the two – objectivity and spirituality – is crossed most easily during Abraham’s story. Because even for a non-Hebrew, non-Christian, or non-Muslim, the faith Abraham demonstrates is extraordinary. Now, anyone who claims Abraham as a religious ancestor has millions or billions of others who believe the same as they do. Abraham didn’t. He was truly the first. Though he was a descendent of Noah, someone who was loved by God, after Babel there seems to have been a long-tern rift between God and all people. Abraham is the first of the “chosen people.” His own brother had separate gods. And yet, there seems to be no conflict because of Abraham’s faith. I wonder if there were so many different beliefs back then that Abraham did not stand out for faith in his particular God. But over time and over terrain, others acknowledge the power of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. However, that power is not presented as superior to any other gods, as there are no others in questions. It must not be until Moses and Aaron lead the Hebrews out of Egypt that we see God triumph over the gods of the Egyptians. Moses then receives the Ten Commandments, the first of which is “I am the Lord your God, you shall not have any other gods besides me.”

I was surprised by how much sex is in Genesis. I was even more surprised by how much sex takes place between unmarried men and women, either as concubines or “temple prostitutes.” Women are not given much agency, nor are they shown much respect throughout Genesis. Rebekah helps Jacob to receive his brother’s blessing, but if that is the best moment for women in the book, then the worst must be when Joseph is deceived by his master’s wife in Egypt. The wife of Joseph’s master attempts to seduce him, giving the impression that this woman must have nothing else to do other than offer herself sexually to Joseph. When she doesn’t get her way, she gets him thrown in jail. Men are not the only ones called to faith, and though I understand Genesis is not the only book for Jews and Christians to turn to for an understanding of their faith, it is the first, and there are no empowering female role models. There wouldn’t be, because that wasn’t the culture when the stories were collected (“redacted”), but what would I do if I were a young Christian or Jewish woman?  What more would I get from Genesis other than bear as many children as possible for my husband?

III. Context in Literature: Similarities and Differences.

Compared to The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey, the biggest noticeable difference is the scope of time Genesis covers. If read literally, Genesis covers well over 2000 years, if not 3000. Even if the events from the Creation to the Flood are read as mythology, the latter two-thirds of Genesis closely follow four entire generations from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. I suspect the reason for this difference is a difference of intent.

All three books deal with their respective deities and those deities interactions with men and women. But Gilgamesh, Odysseus, and their fellow players simply show how the gods work with and through men. In this respect Genesis sets up a new kind of God, one with an ultimate purpose. While we see through each character – at least through each patriarch – how God’s will is to be fulfilled on earth, we see through the generations – from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph – how a grander “design” is being fulfilled. The life of one man, no matter how long he lives, proves significant only insofar as his life has served to further God’s purpose through his people. However the lives of Odysseus and Telemachus, or Gilgamesh and Enkidu, however didactic or demonstrative they are supposed to be, are limited by their humanity. One might even say in these older “mythologies,” the gods are limited by man. Any greater purpose they might have, either in their construction or in their action, is obscured and lost by a human perspective. In this way, I am beginning to see why the Torah and the Bible, by their narrative construction, may have outlasted the others. Although, by making such a statement I recognize my own potential biases and the line between my new knowledge and remaining ignorance of these texts and their enormous impact.

IV. Teaching and Learning

The Book of Genesis is the first book in this world literature independent study that retains its religious relevance, and concurrently, its potential for controversy. On one hand, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all agree that Genesis is a holy text, and those are the three main belief systems we encounter in the contemporary American classroom – though there are others. However, even though all three religions acknowledge the book, they each have unique, subsequent interpretations. Opening any sacred text to discussion in the classroom is risky business on multiple levels, and I will discuss this more in my reflections on The Qur’an.  First of all, students need proper coaching about being respectful of each other’s viewpoints, and secondly, parents (and consequently, administration) need a rock solid rationale for opening up their families’ sacred text for criticism.

I realize that in a public school setting – even in a private or parochial school setting – I would probably never teach the entire Book of Genesis in a literature class. However, in many cases, even students who seem to be devout practitioners of their faiths remain ignorant of their scriptural history, or of the actual stories that comprise their scripture. For this reason, I am glad I read Genesis as a part of this independent study, as it gives me a background knowledge that I could utilize if a religious controversy arose while studying another text, or if a conflict arose out of some external situation that penetrated the school. Knowledge of this cornerstone text may give my students common ground to discuss differences in interpretations of the text by acknowledging its existence as a text, as a compilation of words that are open to interpretation.

If I were in a school system, even a public school system, in which religion, especially Christianity, played a fundamental role in daily life, there are various excerpts that I could pull from different sections of the book that could serve as good windows into unit themes. For example, if I were doing a theme on “cruelty and injustice,” or some variation (for example, many of my classmates are dealing with the Holocaust in their placements), I might intro with Abraham’s plea to God regarding the destruction of Sodom:

While the two men walked on farther toward Sodom, the Lord remained standing before Abraham. Then Abraham drew nearer to him and said: “Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? Suppose there were fifty innocent people in the city; would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it for the sake of the fifty innocent people within in? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to make the innocent die with the guilty, so that the innocent and the guilty would be treated alike. (New American 23)

Questions of innocence and guilt, and the treatment of both, are moral dilemmas that appear in the other literature students will be reading. As mentioned before, this could introduce a lesson on the Holocaust (The Diary of Anne Frank or Anne Frank the play). This passage could also relate to any text on racism and other prejudices, as well as dystopian works. I could see this applying to Things Fall Apart as well, in which there is a constant tension between who is guilty of different crimes and the appropriate way to punish those crimes. 

That Really Long Journey

I. Summary

The Odyssey is an extensive work, an epic poem that I wonder if high school students, especially freshmen and sophomores, have the patience to navigate. Fortunately (and I won’t be telling my students this), Odysseus provides a succinct summary of his adventures in the 23^rd book.

Upon returning from Troy, Odysseus sacked the city of Ismarus, home of the Cicons (Why you ask? Me too…), but after initial success, his foolish men loitered in the city and the Cicons returned with reinforcements. This is the first time Odysseus loses a significant number of his men. After Ismarus, Odysseus lands among the Lotus-eaters, whose delicious lotus made many men forget their desire to return to Ithaca, but Odysseus bound them to his ship and carried them away when he realized what mischief was afoot. Next comes the famous encounter with the Cyclops, who first knows Odysseus as “Noman (No man).” After the Cyclops eats six of Odysseus’s men, Odysseus rams a large wooden spear (battering ram) into the Cyclop’s eye to blind him. Shortly after, he and his remaining men escape upon the bellies of sheep and a ram, but not before finding out that Odysseus has angered Poseidon by blinding his son the Cyclops. This is the real impetus of Odysseus’s future misfortune. After an insignificant couple of stops in Aeolus, Odysseus’s misfortune carries him to Telepylos, where all of his men and their ships are destroyed excepting his own crew and ship. From here the last remaining crew sails to Circe’s island, where Odysseus rescues all of his men from being turned into swine. Circe then sends Odysseus to the house of Hades to receive a prophecy from Theban. After receiving his prophecy, he passes the Sirens, Charybdis and Scylla, the island of Hyperion (Helios), and is eventually stranded alone with Calypso.

All of this actually happens before The Odyssey begins.

When the story opens, the setting is back in Ithaca, in Odysseus’s house, where Telemachus and Penelope, son and wife to Odysseus, endure the insolence of over a hundred suitors trying to buy the hand of Penelope, and in the process reducing Odysseus’s estate to nothing. Athena comes to Telemachus and sends him to Pylos and eventually to Lacedaemon to inquire of Nestor and Menelaus whether or not they know if his father is still alive.

Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice…

Calypso releases Odysseus by Zeus’s bidding (via Hermes via Athena), Poseidon wrecks Odysseus’s ship (canoe), and he shores up in the land of the Phaeacians, who then guide him home to Ithaca.

Once in Ithaca, he and Telemachus, with the help of Athena and Zeus, slaughter – literally – each and every one of the suitors and maidservants who had offended his land and property.

II. Response

Odysseus is not the perfect hero I expected him to be, and I suspect part of the reason for that is my anachronistic reading. By anachronistic I mean culturally. The treatment of women and the liberties women could take were clearly much different, as evidenced by Penelope being a pushover. The bond of father and son too is much different, much closer, in The Odyssey than we see in contemporary stories. Though Odysseus is absent for all of Telemachus’s memorable life, Telemachus cannot authentically achieve manhood until his father returns. I felt this was a much more subtle and powerful way of conveying the importance of lineage to the Greeks than the numerous spoken family trees.

But I had also forgotten that in Greek mythology the gods are much more human, and the humans are much more stubborn. Taken as a paradigm of the epic hero, Odysseus is a fated man, and yet that does not seem to diminish, or in any way particularly affect, his strength, cunning, and decisions. Much of the book is spent discussing Odysseus’s misfortune, and yet he was clearly blessed from birth.

The most difficult aspect of the poem for me was the long, intricate deceptions. Many times when Odysseus comes upon a new land, especially toward the end when he is back in Ithaca, he must deceive those around him. But it is not enough to simply say where he is from and how he got to where he is. Instead, he is compelled to create an entire history, which we must wade through, although we the readers/listeners already know the truth. While reading, I became more and more annoyed with this, and consequently I began to ponder in earnest the meaning of these digressions. Then, I realized that I received some amusement in reading through the deceptions and picking out the kernels of truth littered within them. Like so many other elements of the book, these digressions must have been a requirement of popular story weaving in Homer’s time.

III. Context in Literature: Similarities and Differences

Like The Epic of Gilgamesh, there is a significant amount of repetition in The Odyssey, which is probably due to its development in an oral/musical tradition.

As contemporary readers, we tend to read works like The Odyssey and The Epic as fantasy, but when we remember that the ancient Greeks believed in the gods – Zeus, Athena, and Apollo – in the same way that we believe in God/Yahweh/Allah (and their respective interpretations), the story is much more profound and has more gravity. Through such a lens, one can imagine The Odyssey being one of the books in an ancient Greek equivalent of the Old Testament, as a story of how their gods work through men and women and how humans should interact with their gods and fellow men and women.

Unlike the tragic heroes that would come centuries later, the Shakespearean heroes, Odysseus is never harmed by his own decisions. Though praised for his strength and his counsel, the poem moves by the actions of either the gods or other humans, i.e. the Phaeacians. The line between a great man and a favored man, though discussed a great deal, is taken for granted, and never actually drawn.

There is a great amount of wine and passing around of bread, and there were many times when, due to the translation I read, I questioned the extent to which the seemingly Christian elements throughout the story were from the original or the result of a translator who was the product of a predominantly Christian culture.

As the second extant work of western literature, there are many themes throughout The Odyssey  that will be developed more throughout later western authorship: transitioning from boyhood to manhood, propriety with the gods, propriety with men/women, love and courtship, the power and interference of the gods/God, revenging/avenging, justice, honor, ancestry. Western culture continues to struggle with these concepts. Perspective changes with impetus, or vice versa. Do gods determine our fate, or do our choices? But if our choices determine our fate, where are the gods/God? Odysseus and his fellow players do not ask these questions, but he is the reason authors will ask them later.

IV. Teaching and Learning

After coming so far, I must return to my original question: How do I teach this long, tedious text to a classroom of impatient high school students?

One way to scaffold the text would be with a contemporary young adult (or even adult) hero/adventure novel. The first unit my cooperating teacher at Brentwood Middle School does with her eighth graders is archetypes and the monomyth cycle in hero/adventure novels. She allows each of her students to pick a different hero/adventure story (Harry Potter, The Hobbit, etc.), and then teaches generally about archetypes and the monomyth cycle, enabling students individually to apply that knowledge to their own novels. I could do a similar unit as a precursor to The Odyssey, THE hero/adventure story of all time. By scaffolding this way, students would be familiar with the narrative structure of The Odyssey, which may help them break the large story into smaller morsels. If they get confused as to what is happening structurally, students could go back and ask themselves, “The last section I identified was ‘Crossing the threshold into the unknown.’ Has a helper or mentor come into the story yet? Have there been any challenges yet?” In fact, the students would need prior experience with archetypes and the monomyth cycle because even though Odysseus is revered as the quintessential epic hero, Homer’s narrative timeline manipulates and distorts the cycle quite a bit, to the point that students may need guidance discerning what is happening when, narratively and chronologically.

I mentioned in my earlier response that the most frustrating parts of The Odyssey for me were the disguises and long deceptions that Odysseus weaves along his journey back home. I suspect these moments may also be boring and frustrating to my students as well. One piece of informal teaching advice that I have taken to heart over the years is that if there are sections of a story that you think are going to be especially boring or difficult for students, rather than cut them out, focus on them. I see Odysseus’s tall tales as perfect opportunities to capitalize on the oral/aural nature of The Odyssey. I could plan out students’ reading so that they won’t read those sections for homework, but instead they could take turns – perhaps in pairs – presenting those stories to the class. They could explore the different ways speaking and listening to a story changes the reading experience. And, because there are nuggets of truth in each of Odysseus’s stories, listening to them aloud would help students sharpen their aural attention if I ask them to write down the truths they hear in each different story. This would, in turn, lead to practice with analytic thinking, as students would then explain how Odysseus has disguised the truth, comparing his deception with the events of the story. 

The Epic that is Gilgamesh

I. Summary

The Epic opens with an introduction to Gilgamesh, the mighty king of Uruk-Haven -  an unparalleled man and king who is two-thirds god and one-third man. It would seem, however, that because of his greatness and his consequent lack of any human equal, he abuses his power and oppresses his people, especially the women, presumably by taking them to bed unceremoniously. In response to the people’s complaints, the gods create Enkidu, a wild man equal to Gilgamesh’s “stormy heart” (Tablet I, p. 5). Enkidu is referred to by the god Anu as “zikru,” which according to the footnotes, is often translated as “reply or response.” The translators do not use this meaning, preferring instead to leave the word in Akkadian, but I think the implication of “zikru” meaning “reply/response” could be a good first step for high school students to begin thinking about literary structures. I will elaborate on this later.

After the gods create Enkidu, the wild man, he is “civilized” – made more man than beast – by having sex with a harlot, who was sent to seduce him. The harlot introduces Enkidu to human lust and desire, and he is no longer content to live among the animals. Thus, the harlot brings Enkidu back with her to Uruk-Haven, where he wrestles with Gilgamesh, and, after being bested, becomes his loyal companion, beyond even a bond of brotherhood.

After time passes, Enkidu feels himself becoming weak within the walls of Uruk-Haven, and Gilgamesh takes him out to best Humbaba, guardian of the Cedar Forest and the Great Cedar Tree. The duo – encouraging each other throughout – bests Humbaba, and return with his head and the trunk of the Great Cedar. After the battle, Gilgamesh scorns the affections of the love goddess, and at her angry beckoning, the gods unleash the terrible “Bull of Heaven” to punish them. But Gilgamesh and Enkidu together defeat the Bull as well, and Ishtar, still angry, sheds a sickness upon Enkidu that slowly kills him, sending Gilgamesh into uncontrollable grief.

Seeing Enkidu die, Gilgamesh is confronted with the prospect of his own mortality. Frightened, he travels alone to the ends of the earth seeking Utanapishtim, the only man to be granted immortal life, with the hope of attaining it himself. Gilgamesh pushes himself so hard on his journey that he loses the beauty and physical grandeur of his youth. When he finally finds Utanapishtim, he discovers that he cannot obtain immortality, and he is sent back to Uruk-Haven with a plant that promises to restore his youthful splendor. But the plant is stolen by a snake on the return, and Gilgamesh arrives back at Uruk-Haven an old man, left to contemplate the deeds of his life.

II. Response

I had bought a copy of the Epic about six months ago because I knew I wanted to read it, but I never made time for it. Consequently, I never took a close look at the inside, and I did not realize how incomplete our translation of the story is.

One cannot help but notice how the narrative is solely about the bond between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, containing no other character with any three dimensional quality. Even Enkidu is not as developed as Gilgamesh. Once he becomes civilized, though he is great, he becomes a victim of his humanity (though at the hands of the gods). Despite his godly narrative persona, Gilgamesh is a human character. He alone experiences the range of human emotion.: He is overconfident, courageous, fearful, and sorrowful. Lastly and most importantly, he is nostalgic at the end of his life.

At the end of the book, one element surprised me, and I think it would prove a good discussion among urban secondary students. When Gilgamesh is seeking immortality, his encounters with Siduri, the tavern-keeper; Urshanabi; and Utanapishtim imply that the purpose of humanity is essentially revelry, or to achieve a status in which revelry is possible. After the Vanderbilt student in me objected, another part of me realized there is truth in that idea. We should not strive to be indulgent, wasteful and careless, but if we use Maslow’s hierarchy as the guideline, the self-actualized person, one who has met all of their seven needs, is someone who can revel in themselves -  not selfishly, but with contentment and camaraderie, knowing that they have contributed their upmost to the world. I wonder, could Gilgamesh revel in that way? The story ends so suddenly, and my impression is that he is melancholy at the end, and genuinely troubled, not yet come to terms with the death of Enkidu and his eventual demise.

III. Context in Literature: Similarities and Differences

Though my historical knowledge of stories from ancient cultures is shallow, I am able to make the more seemingly obvious cultural connections offered by the Epic.

A significant element of Gilgamesh’s story is the myth of the Flood, or the “Myth of Atrahasis (Utanapishtim), in which the entire earth is flooded and only one man, his family, and the animals he brings survive on a ship of sorts. The story of Noah is the judeo-christian version of the same story, found in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Torah and the Christian Pentateuch. The action of Noah’s story and Atrahasis’s are identical on a superficial level, as alluded to above, but the premises of both stories couldn’t be more different. In the “Myth of Atrahasis” the flood is the result of either the god’s annoyance at the noise and overpopulation caused by humanity, or simple carelessness. Atrahasis (Utanapishtim) is favored by one god and is thus given the notice and wherewithal to survive, but his survival is more of a foil to extinction than deliberate preservation. In the story of Noah, God is angry at how sinful the world has become (perhaps the biproducts of their sin were noise and overpopulation?), and He deliberately charges Noah with the preservation of humanity. God’s intention is to purify the humankind once again, not to annihilate it.

Other parallels with Genesis are scattered throughout the Epic, notably the presence of the snake that carries off Gilgamesh’s second chance at youth. In Genesis, the serpent initiates humanity’s loss of Eden and eternal life without death (“You are dust and to dust you shall return”). The parallel is not exact, but dual use of the serpent to steal from a human something that is against human nature as we know it – a second chance at youth, immortality, pure innocence – is no mistake.

From a language perspective, the Epic, though written in cuneiform, must have been part of an oral tradition, or oral presentation, because of its reliance on repetition. In the over-arching narrative and individual dialogue, there is extensive repetition of lines that undoubtedly served as a way of keeping the reader hooked into the story. Blatant repetition is also a significant part of The Odyssey, which, if memory serves, was originally sung. Though Homer’s use of repetition is not nearly as extensive, certain lines and descriptions are consistently used to establish a certain culture and tone/mood within the story.

IV. Teaching and Learning

The Epic of Gilgamesh would be an ideal first book to read for a high school literature class, especially freshmen or sophomores, when they don’t know that they could be reading Dickens. The Epic explores the nature of our humanity and what ultimately defines us as physical beings. One would have a hard time holding a deep discussion about societal and cultural ideologies, gender roles, or power in The Epic. While those elements are all there, they are not developed. The purpose of the narrative is for Gilgamesh and Enkidu to discover and face their humanity and their mortality (the latter being a subset of the former). Since human characters constitute the basis for the majority of literature that secondary students read, a good first step in developing their critical lenses is to have them begin thinking about what it means to be human. What are the indicators of our humanity, and how do we react to them? Death, companionship (brotherhood and sisterhood), lust/sex, drive for success (?), legacy, fun/revelry, cruelty. These are all things that history has shown are either necessary or inevitable human experience. How do we react to them? With courage? With fear? With faith?

The one point I would want to hammer home more than any other is thinking of Enkidu as a “response” to Gilgamesh. I remember hearing some author describe writing as putting a bunch of characters in a room and seeing what they do, and I have yet to hear a better way of describing how narrative works internally. In all literature – even Faulkner – we have one focal character at a time, and we continue to read, listen, or watch because we are waiting to see how other characters and other parts of the world react to that character. If Enkidu is a reaction to Gilgamesh, who is Othello’s reaction? Who is Odysseus’s reaction? Who or what is Okonkwo’s reaction? And from there – who is your reaction? Whose reaction might you be? How might you react in this or that situation? In this way, The Epic could be a great tool for initiating metacognition.

Reading through what I would later realize is probably an outdated copy of The Epic, I was constantly drawn to the transparency of translation and the gaps in the text. My first reaction was, “If there are gaps in the text, why can’t my students fill them in?” I suspect doing this activity with different sections of The Epic would do a lot to demystify literature and take some of the later canonical texts off of their pedestals. Also, because we are dealing with an ancient Sumerian narrative, not all the translation is that smooth, and I would like to remind my students that what we are reading is a translation, not the original words. When a section feels awkward, why don’t they re-translate it however they feel necessary for the story to make sense? This could be a great tool getting students to help each other illuminate texts, so that they don’t rely so much on my infallible knowledge of interpretation. 

Welcome Melanie and Strangers

At long last I have created the blog for our World Literature independent study. I have been reading and reflecting since the summer; I just hadn't created the actual blog until now. I'm trying to be as productive as possible on this sick day, and fortunately most of these initial postings are copy/pastes from documents I composed over the summer. 

I know your schedule is crazy hectic, Melanie, and you may not be able to read these in great detail. Nonetheless, if you have any suggestions on these initial posts for what I can do better on later posts, I would appreciate it. 

More to come!

Jonathan