response mythology

refer to the attached document.

(Kaitlyn)To be very honest I know next to nothing about mythology, it has never been something that I have had around me or taught in school, I guess it was one of those subjects that got kind of, overlooked. But history is history and in my opinion, it’s important to know what happened in the past to prevent future mishaps or wrongdoings. Therefore I don’t know anything about mythology to start, but I am eager to learn more about all these different gods, goddesses, etc., and am surprised to find out that entire towns or civilizations would support the myths or people I am reading about. 

The gods and goddesses seem to all have their sanction of what was claimed as their own, one wraps his arms around the earth floating the continents with his aqua arms, and another is essentially the undertaker and decides whose soul belongs where. The people are peasants and they are unequal to those that are considered the higher power, they are the protected and shall not reach out to become a protector. From what I have read it doesn’t seem like the gods step on each other’s territory or have competitions to push each other out, it seems as though all that made it up there are respected and get to look down on those that are less than them. 

While reading I noticed that there is a bit of a divide between men and women the same as we have today. A big part of societal issues today is gender equality and the general outlook on how each gender is portrayed without any prior information. Men are supposed to be large, strong, and tall, to protect and conquer for the interest of mankind. Women are supposed to be dainty and spread love, make a house a home, and show endearing qualities. I can see the reverse argument for Cupid who is the God of Love being that Eros is a male, being portrayed as the, “fairest of the deathless gods,” (Hamilton, 36) but that is one instance in an array of different people. It seems that even though we have come a long way to today with working on gender-specific stereotypes, for these “myths” to be ancient and long ago, it doesn’t seem like we have come that far. Yes women are seen as loving and they can be attractive to people around them, but in the man’s brain, they are simply there to be of service to the man, and to man the home when they are not present. It’s interesting because even though the language of the reading may be hard for me to get used to, being that it is not in modern English, I can still very well understand one thing. Women like Aphrodite would “…[laugh] sweetly or mockingly at those her wiles had conquered, the irresistible goddess who stole away even the wits of the wise” (Hamilton, 32). Being a woman I translated this to essentially smiling in the faces of those who either are factually in the wrong, or have done wrong to you, and that is something that is still very much alive today. From history, we know that women were seen as property or disposable at the discretion of the man that homed her, and from what I have gotten so far, the teachings from this book are systemically the same, just written in fancy writing. 

Hamilton, Edith. 
Mythology. Grand Central Publishing, 2011.