Assignment I
Choice #1
Share a part of your family's
mythology by presenting in essay form some of the automatic stances or
unquestioned assumptions or habitual way of seeing things which cause certain
values to be celebrated (or rejected). You need not necessarily judge those values
but simply explain your awareness of them in your life and how they relate to a
larger society. In my family it was an unquestioned assumption that my
brother and I would graduate from college, no matter what we had to
sacrifice to do so. My mother had a habitual way of seeing things, that
different races do not mix, which my brother and I rejected when we started
college. Myth is the way that individuals reflect their society through
language, customs, religion, art, tools, etc. Also, we belong to many levels of
societies. Family is one, a synagogue could be another, or a neighborhood, a
state, a nation, for example. Present the myth and relate it to your family and
also to American society. Are religious celebrations important in your family?
Is there a code of behavior, written, spoken, or assumed? Are there family
rituals? You are not limited to these suggestions. They are just to get you
started.
The purpose of the assignment is
to promote in you an awareness of myth as a part of contemporary life as well
as a part of Greek and Roman life with which we more readily associate it.
The paper needs to be approximately two pages in length, standard type, twelve
point font and needs to be divided into the presentation of the stance, assumption,
or way of seeing things in the first part and an assessment of the values
involved in the second part. It needs to develop one topic through detail,
rather than many topics. The essay needs to be carefully edited and proofed
and needs to be a finished, accomplished piece of writing.
You may want to look at the General
Guidelines for Grading Papers, at my site, under Honors Composition II under
A/B paper, at the end.
Choice #2
If your character and personality
stayed pretty much the same, but you had to live during either the Greek or
Roman times and could choose a patron god/goddess, who would it be and why?
You will need to read about several gods before making a decision. Do not
use any of the gods covered in your text or assignments unless you have new
information to share about them. Some sources are Edith Hamiton's Mythology,
Michael Grant's Myths of the Greeks and Romans, Bulfinch's Mythology,
Volume I: The Age of Fable, or Tripp's The Meridian Handbook of Classical
Mythology, Part I. You may not use your text as a source. What is the
background of the god? What is he or she like? Part II: Why is your choice
appropriate for you? The paper needs to contain the appropriate detail to
support responses to these questions. Length and quality are as described
under Choice #I. However, you will need to be sure to document your source/s
carefully and have a correct work/s cited page. Review MLA and plagiarism in the Hacker Manual and do not use general encyclopedias.
The purpose of this assignment is
to foster a better understanding of the way of life of the Greeks and
Romans; therefore, a thoughtful response is needed.
Either assignment is worth 50
points.