Essay: Lessons for Life

A lot of the stories from the Native Americans either tells a story to explain something that has happened or to teach some kind of lesson. In the story "How the Rattlesnake Learned to Bite" there is actually a bit of both. These stories were meant to give meaning to history and to try to shape their futures by teaching life lessons on what is right and wrong. These lessons started the founding for the morals that the Natives developed. If these types of stories hadn't been made there may have not been a type of order because people are inherently not good and these lessons tell you of reasons to do right.

The first aspect that I noticed in this story and even in the title is the explanation of how the rattlesnake learned to bite. The foremost important reason for this story is the explanation. The snake needed some kind of way to protect itself from people that were annoying him because he had no way to be assertive. Since he needed some way of protecting himself he went to the Elder Brother who gave him fangs to bite anyone who annoyed the snake.

The second aspect of the story is the lesson of it and what the story is trying to teach. To me the story is don't push someone so far that they have to give themselves the upper hang and could eventually do harm to someone because of the pent up aggression that they feel. The snake eventually goes to the Elder Brother to get help because people have annoyed him so much about his rattler. He is too nice to say anything about it so when the Elder Brother gives him fangs he uses them to hurt and eventually kill the first person that annoys him after getting his fangs.

A ruined southwestern village

Essay: One of the Best

The use of the term hero has a broad area of uses. Most people think of a hero as someone out of a comic book or someone that saves hundreds of people's lives. My definition of a hero would be someone who completes something that is against their character in a good way or someone that accomplishes something for the good of himself and/or the people around him. This stories of Odysseus are what I would consider a rounded hero. He saves his land from being taken over in the war and then he fights through many hardships on his way home. He does all of this while keeping his men calm and preparing them for the worst but still giving them the courage to fulfill their task at hand. Some of the character's of the epic may not see Odysseus as a hero but as villain form their view but everyone always has atlas two ways of viewing a story. I haven't read the Iliad but have only read clips and reviews of the epic literature. I have thoroughly read and studied the Odessey and time and tim again Odysseus portrays himself of never being afraid of anything and being this aggressive, brave person while inside he questions everything about himself. He also knows that many of his men will die if not all of them and maybe even himself but he still has the drive to return home to his family and his land that he calls his own. Later in the epic he returns home and fulfills many tasks along while the one his own wife gives him to prove that he is himself. All that Odysseus goes through and is still driven to the very end is what I would classify as a hero. 

Odysseus in one of his last tasks

Essay: The First Justice for Crime

The stories of Noah were some of the first known stories about laws that were placed among the human race and the justice that followed the disobedience of those laws. The first story was about the flood. God had told the people to behave and to stop their wicked ways but no one would listen to these warnings. God brought down the floods that wiped the Earth clean of people and of the sin that was brought by the wicked ways of humans. The later stories tell of the restructuring of the human population and how the evil began to arrive again. One of the stories began with Noah being tricked into drinking the "poisoned" wine from the serpent, better known as satan. The drinking of this wine caused Noah to behave like a monkey and behave abnormally. Not much justice came form this story though. Another later story was about the tower of Babel. The people of Shinar tried to build a tower to heaven to see what it was like. God didn't like what they were doing so in order to stop the construction of this great tower he scrambled their languages and scattered them across the Earth. The final story began with a few of God's angels asking for permission to walk among the people on Earth. After long thought and argument he agreed to left them rome within the human population. After countless acts of temptation the angels ultimately gave into the submissiveness of the women. Their punishment for this action was that their children would be known as the giants and the would be forced to live among the people and not return to heaven. This unit was primarily filled with stories and crimes of characters and God's punishment for those crimes based on what he sees fit.

Scales of Justice