Hayden Fisher
Student #:1007492857
CLAA06H3
March 10th 2021
Narrative
Gaia is the Greek deity known to be mother Earth. She has created this beautiful planet, and all that comes from it. Since the beginning of human existence, Gaia blessed mortal humans with all that the planet Earth has to offer. From the lush vegetation forests, to the rapid rivers and creeks and all things in-between. Gaia is a motherly figure, and sees all life on Earth as her children. In the beginning, humans used Gaias gifts for survival, and in-turn, early humans worshiped her, showing great appreciation for her kindness and blessings. They used earth's materials limitedly and used the land respectfully. They thanked Gaia for blessing them with food to eat, materials to build, and water to drink. However, Gaia had a short temper. Whenever Gaia felt disrespected, or that her kindness was being taken for granted, she would unleash disaster upon those she felt needed to be taught a lesson. She’d dry up the rivers, causing crops to die and starvation to run rampant in villages. Many would die in these disasters, serving as a reminder to always be grateful for the things Gaia has given them. Only once she had felt that the people had regained appreciation for her generosity would she stop these disasters. Over the course of humanities existence, Gaia would periodically give these reminders whenever she saw fit. However, as human technology evolved, they became more and more ignorant to the Earth's precious and finite resources that Gaia had given them. They began using these resources rapidly and carelessly. They had become fixated on advancement and production at whatever cost. They tore down Earth's forests to build giant cities and highways which tainted Gaia’s beautiful land and polluted her oceans and rivers. Gaia unleashed hurricanes, floods, fires, and droughts upon them, but the humans' greed had blinded them, and made them forget the value of the land that Gaia had so graciously blessed upon them so long ago. This under-appreciation greatly angered Gaia. After giving the humans all of Earth's gifts, they recklessly squander them in efforts to advance, blinded by greed and ignorance. It's said that Gaias anger will soon hit a point of no return. She will continue to heat the Earth, causing catastrophic events to occur around the globe. She continues to cause increasingly frequent droughts, floods, hurricanes, blizzards, heatwaves, and droughts that cause suffering to millions of human lives around the world. Unless humans change the way they live, and learn once again to appreciate Gaias gifts and use them as she intended, she will continue punishing humans until there are none left.
Analysis
I took inspiration from various classical myths to develop my myth. After reading these classical myths, they allowed me to develop my myth in different ways and made me make different creative choices as to what kind of story I wanted to tell, and what kind of themes, characteristics, and composition I wanted to include in my myth. Gaia or Gaea is part of the first generation of the creation of gods from Hesiod's Theology. The story goes that in the beginning, there was an abyss of darkness called Chaos. There was also the mother Earth (Gaia), God of the underworld (Tartarus) and the God of sexual desire (Eros). Chaos then spawned Erebus and Nyx, the darkness of the underworld and the darkness of Earth respectfully. Gaia spawned Uranus (the sky) Ourea (the mountains), and Puntus (the sea). (Hesiod, Theogony 1-12). I chose to use parts of Hesiod’s Theology as a way of making my myth more true to real mythology. By knowing the myths in Hesiod's Theology, it not only gave me the inspiration to use Gaia to be represented as mother nature in my myth, but it allowed me to accurately and effectively depict and implement her and her characteristics into my myth. In my myth, Gaias nature and characteristics stay relatively true to her mythology described in ancient texts. In Hesiod’s Theology, Gaias is said to have created the mountains, the sky, and the sea because she is mother Earth. Because of this, I chose to stay true to this in my mythological story. She is known by humans as being mother Earth and created the land and sea for them. She also created everything on Earth that humans are able to use. Gaias was described as the “giver of dreams and the nourisher of plants and young children''. She was a symbol of nourishments and a motherly figure to all life on Earth. In the myth, it's explained that she sees all life on earth as her children, and she is seen as mother Earth. I chose to include this characteristic from theology, and make sure that her nourishing nature can be seen in the myth as she graciously gifts humans the resources that allow them to live a full life and exist on the planet. She cares for and nourishes the Earth as well as all who exist on it. It is only when humans begin to take her and the Earth's resources for granted, do we see the angry side of Gaias. This Gaias is still in line with her motherly characteristic because she only punishes the humans in order to teach them a lesson and remind them to be grateful for what's been given to them.
My myth also takes inspiration from the Greek myth of Pandora's Box. In this Myth, Zeus wants to take vengeance on Prometheus after he gave the fire to humans. He told Hephaestus to create the first human woman who was named Pandora. Zeus gave Pandora a jar and told her to not open it no matter what. Zeus told her to bring it to Prometheus’ brother, who accepted Pandora. What Pandora didn't know is that the jar held all the evils of the world inside of it. Pandora eventually gave into her temptations and opened the jar. This caused sickness, war, hunger, death, and hatred to be released into the world (Hesiod, Works and Days 42-90). The myth of Pandora's box helped me choose global warming to be my theme for my myth. Pandora's box explains the existence of the disaster, death, hunger, and all the evil that exists in this world. Similarly, my myth explains how natural disasters like hurricanes and floods exist in our world. It is an explanation for these phenomena that are difficult to understand. Oftentimes people needed to come up with ways to explain why bad things exist in the world. Ideas like the devil or pandora's box are explanations for these bad things and give reason to why they occur. Pandora's box made me decide that I wanted to explain the reason behind the existence of a negative event in the world. Pandora's box gave me inspiration for telling the origin of natural disasters and climate change. The myth of Pandora's box also influenced other choices I made when creating my myth. For example, both Pandora's box and my myth contain the idea of unleashing disaster onto someone as a form of punishment or revenge. In Pandora's Box, Zeus creates Pandora's Box to get back at Prometheus. To take his revenge he tries to give Prometheus’ brother a jar with all of the world's evil inside of it, and its released. I used aspects of that idea in my myth as well. In my myth, Gaia wants to punish humans for mistreating and under-appreciating her gifts. She punishes them by unleashing disasters upon them, which explains the existence of natural disasters and the more frequent rate of natural disasters seen with global warming.
The last myth that I took inspiration from for my myth is The Apple of Discord. My myth took inspiration from The Apple of Discord because both myths tell a story that contains human greed resulting in death and destruction. In The Apple of Discord, Aphrodite promised Paris the love of the most beautiful woman in the world if he chooses to pick her to be the fairest of them all. Despite being offered wisdom, and kingly power, Paris immediately chose Aphrodite. This woman was married to a king. Paris stole her and kept her for himself, which caused a ten year war, resulting in death and destruction (Homer, Iliad. 18.112-117). This is an example of human greed causing death and destruction, as Paris’ greed caused the ten year war, which resulted in death and destruction. Understanding this myth and seeing its interesting themes allowed me to implement some of its themes into my myth. My myth includes themes of greed causing death and construction, as humans' greed for progress and technological advancement results in them becoming blind to the generosity of Gaia, and becoming unappreciative of her gifts. This causes her to be angered, and she punishes humans with death and destruction. In both myths, greed is the source and main cause of tragedy. In my myth, I used humanities greed to show this idea, and in Apple of Discord, Paris was used to show this idea. I made the choice to have my myth largely revolve around the idea of death and destruction as a cause of greed because of the inspiration I got from the Apple of Discord.
Bibliography
Hesiod. 1914. Theology. Translated by Hugh G. Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0130 (Accessed March 31, 2021)
Hesiod, Theogony 1-12
Hesiod, Works and Days 42-90
Homer, Iliad. 18.112-117