Myth & Media

After watching the mythology presentations in our class, I have done a lot of thinking about the concepts presented in mythos and their relation to the modern day. What I have concluded is that many of the themes discussed in class are present in various facets of the media. For example, the trickster figure is a common trope in comics, movies, and even televised series. Stories make use of the trickster figure at various points, often for comedic purposes.

The female divine, too, can be seen in many aspects of the media, but is more specific to celebrities who bill themselves with a particular theme in mind. The male divine, though not quite of such epic and religious proportion as depicted in myth, is nevertheless present in modern media. Even sacred places have their, well... place. Those that might contest the relevance of myth in present day have only to look to the media to see examples of classic mythical figures.

Myth & Culture

For as long as I can remember, I have read. Books, magazines, brochures, comics -- so long as there is text, I am content to read it. I have gladly read and re-read stories over the years, sometimes starting a book again just after I've read it for the first time, certain I may have missed something. But of all those many tomes and texts, my very favorite type of literature is fantasy and myth. Something has always appealed to me about creation myths in specific, though I couldn't say just what it is about them I so enjoy. I like learning about myths from different cultures, too, as so many different cultures embrace unique and fascinating variants on the origin of man, how the sun came to sit in the sky, and so on. It makes me wonder about how those different myths come to define specific aspects of the culture and how they may have affected modern day societies.

Myth-ink Link

Many people regard myths as a thing of the past -- stories that are in relative conjunction with other legends and stock fantasy. However, myths are relevant to the modern day. For example, many people see graveyards as bad places to be, and perhaps even go so far as to associate them with bad luck, though there is only superstition to dictate such a feeling. As a culture, we associate graveyards with the dead (and rightly so), yet many old traditions from multiple different cultures suggest that the spirits of the dead are present in such a place, and that may be the reason why we, a culture otherwise ostensibly devoid of mythos, believe that graveyards are inherently bad places to be.

Superstition plays an unquestionable role in all of this, as well. If we did not believe that negative things would come as a result of our not observing a certain tradition or unspoken rule, we would most likely let a superstition, or myth, fade into obscurity.

Bad Poetry

As an individual who occasionally gives in to some mysterious whim and writes some potentially poor or pretentious poetry, I feel a little presumptuous speculating about what makes bad poetry so unbearably… bad. The World English Dictionary’s definition of poetry is “literature in metrical form; verse”, which gives us plenty of insight as to what poetry is, literally (no pun intended), but does not give us any idea of what constitutes good poetry, or what we should look for to determine poetry’s worth.

I surmise, then, that bad poetry lacks originality. It does not inspire the reader to imagine any circumstance that they have not already considered, nor do they envision a setting they have not already encountered. Bad poetry is matter-of-fact and practical. It reuses age-old phrases and images that not only fail to stimulate the reader, but also cause them to think the piece trite. Above all else, bad poetry has no imagination.

Heart's Desire

O, fickle heart, it has e'er been thou
That has led me astray, and so sweetly
Cajoled, lured me to this state wherein
I have lost all my control, completely.
Lost my logical sense of right and wrong
And lost all of my control completely.
How do I rebel against thee? Thou'rt
Not of a substance which I can defend
Against, nor art thou conscious choice; naught can
Come of it but unfortuitous end.
No simple thing to resist, yet I must,
Or I shall face unfortuitous end.
So ensorcelled by your lies have I been,
And in so, tempted to do wayward sin.

Riptide

The trepidatious white foam of the tide
Reminds me there is infinitely more to me
Inside.
A concept adrift on currents presently,
The I of I swam out too far and died,
Henceforth to be washed up
On the other side.
A place far across the sea.

How is it that the me of me came to be
Sans compass, navigation,
No stars or iron with which to guide
Or plot my course?
It was nature's judicious
Show of force,
That which the tremulous foam belied.
I found myself trying to rely
On instinct, but to no avail.
The "why" of it is less form than function.

To the credit of the tide
It has taught me
I must come to see
The I of I, the me of me.

Poetry Analysis: Robert Frost

Renowned as one of the greatest American poets, Robert Frost is a literary icon celebrated by poetry enthusiasts and scholars the world over. One of Frost’s greatest poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” conjures up a veritable plethora of images, from the peaceful, wintry landscape to the darkly ominous deep woods. Many scholars interpret the poem as a nod to the danger of distraction and the press of obligations on a man’s conscience, and yet others read into it for its various and sundry interpretations relating to transcendence, mysticism, and religion, but it was the inscrutable John Ciardi who “first unsettled a great many poetry-lovers with his analysis of Robert Frost’s poem” in 1958, asserting that “the dark and the snowfall symbolize a death-wish, however momentary” (440). His irrefutable view of the poem revolutionized the way that many individuals now approach it.

The death-wish interpretation is based largely on the suggestive nature of the poem, and there is an unmistakable air of somberness throughout. Though the beginning lines are rather ambivalent, based mostly on the narrator’s observation of the landscape and the falling snow, it soon turns to darker things. “The darkest evening of the year” in line 8 may be a reference to the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year (and thereby the longest night), but it also conjures up an image of danger. The distracted narrator, no matter his intentions, is still subject to the bitter cold, and winter days are short. Stopping for too long in the snow-laden forest would inevitably mean death. Even though phrases such as “easy wind and downy flake” and “lovely, dark and deep” summon up the image of a peaceful landscape, the tone that the poem takes on in the last few lines are almost as cold as the snow the speaker is riding in. "But I have promises to keep," he says, as if awakening from his reverie of the first three stanzas of the poem, "and miles to go before I sleep". Sleep can be interpreted a number of ways, but in this instance, it likely represents a symbol of death, meaning that the speaker has obligations to fulfill before he can rest with finality.

The title itself even gives some indication of the death-wish. It is no mistake that Frost chose the word “stopping”, though he could have chosen a word like “hesitating”, or even “pausing”, which would ultimately lend the poem a completely different tone. As it stands, however, there is ostensible hesitation, and the temptation to stop and rest. As Ciardi puts it, there is an impulse buried within the poem, “hunger for final rest and surrender that a man may feel” (440). With the sense that there is more to his trek than simply a naturalist’s admiration of the surrounding area, but rather that the weight of obligations lie, largely unspoken, on his mind, the speaker can be assumed to be a a more morbid and introspective individual than initially suspected.

In his article “The ‘Death Wish’ In ‘Stopping By Woods’”, James Armstrong says that he himself “heard Mr. Frost himself at a public lecture pooh-pooh the death-wish interpretation”, but that this interpretation is not without merit; “if we feel obligated to accept Frost’s disavowal as the final word, then there is no more to be said; but we need not do so” (440). It is ultimately the audience that interprets a poem, regardless of how a writer intends it, though Armstrong’s further interpretation of “Stopping By Woods” coincides with Ciardi’s views of the poem. Armstrong speaks to the idea of the death-wish when he addresses the tone of the poem, saying that “the association of death with dark, with winter, and with snow [is not] an unnatural or novel one” (445). Armstrong also references Thomas Mann and Thomas Lovell Beddoes, both of whom have relied on the symbolic significance of snow to represent death in their own writing. Through Armstrong’s interpretation, Ciardi’s impressions hold true; that the death-wish is a significant facet of the otherwise innocuous poem.

The commonly-held belief is not the interpretation of all who read it, and as William H. Shurr asserts in his article “Once More to the ‘Woods’: A New Point of Entry into Frost’s Most Famous Poem”, “whatever associations with death the [poem] may have, they are also appropriate to another area of experience… a more problematical aspect of the death-wish interpretation is the existence in the poem of a concrete symbol of death” (586). While it is true that there is no one thing in the poem that points specifically to a solid symbol of death, many images are indicative of it, as with the dark woods and the press of obligations. In Shurr’s analysis of the poem’s structure, he finds that “line 13, ‘the woods are lovely, dark and deep,’ is central… there is only one assertion in the poem about the subject most under consideration” (587). Following his logic, the narrator’s attention to the woods is the actual subject of the poem, and though the unknown lies within them, there is nothing about them that unequivocally implies death. Shurr goes on to say that “the speculation that this resistance is primarily to the lure of death is finally inadequate… if death appears in the poem, it is represented by the ‘frozen lake’” (587). The lake, though it helps to paint a picture of the scenery, does not imply death strongly enough to be considered the only symbol in the poem that could be construed with such a meaning. Though Shurr makes valid points about the structure and tone of the poem, Armstrong’s affirmation of Ciardi’s interpretation easily convinces readers of the reality behind the rhyme.

Robert Frost himself denied the potential death-wish interpretation of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, but Armstrong encourages readers to challenge the assertions made by poets themselves; after all, Frost admitting that his poem embodies a death-wish would cause readers to question his motives, and “few men would willingly put themselves in the position of having to answer such a question” (440). Individuals who read the poem for themselves cannot help but see the images clearly presented there. The snow, the dark, and the unspoken obligations on the narrator’s mind are all irrefutable indications of the true meaning behind the poem.


Works Cited
Armstrong, James. "The "Death Wish" in "Stopping By Woods"" College English 25.6 (1964): 440+. JSTOR. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. .
Shurr, William H. "One More to the "Woods": A New Point of Entry into Frost's Most Famous Poem." The New England Quarterly 47.4 (1974): 584-94. JSTOR. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. .