Reading through this essay can be a little hard, as the author has it jump from one story to another, and the main biases of all of the stories appears to be the idea of man struggling to prove that he is significant; that he as an individual existed. I believe this gets proved by the following excerpt from the essay, “runes carved three feet up from the floor of Carlisle Cathedral, which translated into English say, “Tolfink carved these runes in this stone.”” The point that Ursula K. LeGuin was making is we are scared of death, (or the dark night) and we desperately want to leave some trace of who we were behind, which is why we write and tell stories. Of course, some stories are more popular, or at least have survived longer, such as the Saga of BeoWulf, (which is about twelve hundred years old); and the story of George and the Dragon. It seems the stories that have lasted the longest though, are about the struggles between man/demigods and the gods. In other words; stories like Heracles, Perseus, and hundreds of others. (Yes I know I have only mentioned Anglo-Saxon myths and Greek mythology, but those are the stories I know.) And I would agree with Ursula that the main point of why man tells stories is so that he is remembered, even if it only is as the man who had the best version of some tale. (In a way, Shakespeare is famous for that, he simply told the old stories better than anyone else)
I agree that it's hard to read. It doesn't have a clear structure. Any meaning has to be pieced together from clues here and there. The main idea you found is something I considered too but I ended up writing about something else. Stories are a way to live beyond death. A good author lives forever within their writing. They can speak to people who live long after them. I like how you apply it to other literature. You make a point about why some stories survive and others don't.
ReplyDeleteI didn't read this one, but it sounds like it was extremely difficult to extract the point from what you and Brandon have said. I definitely like how you tied in other literature to make an excellent point. I think fear of death and leaving this world is very much a reason that people write about themselves. A person tries to live life to its fullest just so that they can leave something to this world when they are no longer here. Good response!
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