Reading Diary A: Jataka Tales (Babbitt)

(Photo source: UnTextbook: Master being Harsh to His Ox)

Monkey and the Crocodile: Great story about how brains is better than brawn. I really like how smart and cunning the monkey is and how he always outsmarts the crocodile. The story is told in a pretty basic third person style. I could change up the style OR I saw how one student took and changed their story from animals to children and I thought that was very clever.



How the Turtle saved his own life: This is another story of how being cunning can save your life. I like how the turtle kept quiet up until he found it to be the right time to speak. I could change this story to be how the king made his sons face their fears and grow to be strong men. Because killing that turtle would have solved nothing to be honest.



The Ox who won his Forfeit: I like this story because it shows that kindness gets you more than harshness. The ox could have easily pulled those hundred carts but because his master said mean thing she shut down and refused to do so. I don’t blame the ox. I would have reacted the same way. I think that is how anyone would react to how harsh the owner was to him.





The Quarrel of the Quails: This story emphasizes the importance of team work. I like that the quails work together to get free. It also shows the importance of letting go of grudges. If the angry quail would have accepted the others apology they would not have all been sold in town.

Essay: Cupid and Psyche

(Psyche's Beauty being honored by People)

This week I read Apuleius’s Cupid and Psyche. I got different impressions from all the different gods and goddesses in the story. It was very interesting to see how they acted compared with what they were the god’s and goddess’s of. For example, Venus was the goddess of love and beauty. She was played out to be very vain. She always had to be the center of attention and the most beautiful one there is. Ceres is the goddess of agriculture, fertility, and motherly relationships was very moved by Psyche’s tearful plea when she was in her temple seeking refuge. She was very sweet even though she did not wish to make an enemy out of Venus. Cupid is the god of love. In this story, he is shown to be very passionate, impulsive, and wild. I think this is a very good personification of love.

The relationships portrayed in the story between gods and humans is very different than what I expected. Most of the gods and goddesses treat the human’s well unless they do something that offends them. I would have originally expected them to look down on the humans and not really have much to do with them. I was very wrong. All of them in the story, minus Venus, are actually very nice to Psyche, who is mortal throughout almost all of the story. They all feel sorry for her because she has Venus’ wrath directed at her. An example of the deities being nice to her is when Jupiter makes her a goddess so that she can be with Cupid forever. He could have just let Venus torture her until she died, but he took pity on her. Another example is when Ceres lets her leave her temple even though she knows Venus is looking for h

er. She felt bad for the girl, but would not let her take refuge there so as to not damage her friendship with Venus. However, she could have held her there and let Venus know where she was and by doing this she gave Psyche a chance.

The relationships between gods is a funny one. It is literally like high school all over again. Someone is always in a fight or sleeping with someone else’s significant other. It is so comical to read.

I did not really learn anything that I did not already know about religious practices associated with the gods from this reading. I was a really big Roman and Greek mythology reader when I was younger so I was pretty familiar with the temples and leaving offerings and such in them.

Heart and Soul

“I want you to make her pay!” shouted my mother. Ugh, here she goes again, all mad because some girl is supposedly more beautiful than she is. Women can be crazy like that. She called me in here to ask, no, command me to ruin this poor girl’s life. Oh! I should probably introduce myself, I am Cupid. You know…the God of Love? And my mother is Venus. So now you see how crazy it is that she’s worried this girl is more beautiful than her because she is the Goddess of Beauty! How can anyone be more beautiful than the Goddess of Beauty! That’s just crazy! However, my mother asked me to do something so I shall do what I can for her.





Cupid descended down from the clouds with a few great bursts from his angel-like golden wings and perched on a tree outside of the girl’s house. The girl he was looking for was inside her room sobbing uncontrollably about how unhappy she was.





Oh my Jove! This girl is beautiful! (Please don’t tell my mother.) I wonder why she is crying. With looks like that she shouldn’t be lonely…she should have many suitors! None that would be as fitting to her as a god…wait.





And with that thought, Cupid took out an arrow and pricked himself with it. He immediately fell more in love with the girl, whose name was Psyche. He hatched out a plan to take her as his bride. He had commanded the oracle of Apollo to tell the family that the family that in order for the girl to be happy, they must lead her to the cliff top and leave her there alone. Once her family left her on the cliff top, Cupid sent Zephyr to carefully bring her from the cliff top into the beautiful, flower-filled valley below. She looked up and saw the gorgeous divine palace and heard voices that led her inside. Cupid chose to hide in the shadows, but spoke sweetly to the girl he wanted to take as his wife.





She is so scared. Maybe I should say something to her to help calm her down.





“Dearest girl, the servants here cannot be seen, but are merely voices. Do not fear, though, because they will cater to your every whim. Go on to the chambers just beyond this door and sleep. Once you have your strength you can bathe and then eat all that you desire.”







And with that Psyche went into the other room and slept. When she awoke she went and bathed and had a grand feast. After she ate, she retired to the bed chambers. Once she was in bed, Cupid slipped under the covers beside her.





"Dear Psyche, do not be alarmed. I have come to take you as my wife, for I will be the most loving of husbands. Please have me, darling..."






Psyche was so moved by the speech of the unknown God that she of course said yes and after many trials, mishaps, and clashes with Venus, Jove made her the Goddess of Soul and she and Cupid lived happily ever after.

(Cupid and Psyche) 

Author's note: The story I chose to write over is Apuleius's Cupid and Psyche. I took this story and made it from Cupid's point of view in some parts and wrote it from an outside point of view to help further along the plot a little quicker. The original story is written kind of from Psyche's side of things and I did not think it did a great job explaining why Cupid chose to defy his mother's orders, so I tried to include that in my version. I think it is very important to include that detail. I felt it really added a depth to the story that the original was missing. The mother/son relationship has always been very intriguing to me because even though they love their mothers, they still are defiant boys who do things that go against their parents' wishes. I really enjoyed this entire story and I recommend it to whoever is looking for a nice and interesting classical read! It is a lot longer than what I wrote here and the second half of the story(I wrote on the first) has a lot of action and excitement! I created the title "Heart and Soul" based on the fact that Cupid is considered the Roman God of Love and Psyche is the Roman Goddess of Soul.






Bibliography: Apuleius's Cupid and Psyche

Reading Diary B: Apuleius's Cupid and Psyche

(Psyche at the Shrine)

I really enjoyed this reading because I love the mythology part of it. I have always been intrigued by this ever since I was little. I really liked how Venus gets so angry and brings her wrath down on Psyche because that just shows that even though your in-laws may be bad, at least they aren't angry goddess bad. It is so fitting with how the mother(Venus) runs everything and her son just lays around while she's reeking all of this havoc. However, I do like at the end when he swoops in and finally does something about it. Another aspect of this story I find interesting is that they have the three impossible tasks. I liked that part of the story. I also like how the ending is a happy one.

Reading Diary A: Psyche and Cupid

(Psyche Abandoned)

The story I chose to read about was Apuleius's Psyche and Cupid. It is different from last weeks because it is a continuous story broken into chapters. It is about three sisters. The youngest of the three is proclaimed to be more beautiful than Venus by the common folk. This angers Venus and she sends her son, Cupid, to deal her a horrible fate. Instead, Cupid takes the woman as his wife, but does not allow her to ever see him even though he sleeps with her at night. Psyche's family grieves the loss(they think she's dead) hard. Once she catches word of this, she convinces Cupid to let her see her sisters. He advises her that they will try and ruin what she has and that even though she knows nothing about him that she must not disclose anything about him to her sisters because they will try and bring her down. The sister's come in and see that Psyche is living like a Goddess and become very jealous of her. They plot to bring their sister down from the life she is living. Cupid catches wind of this and warns Psyche. He also reveals to her that she is carrying his child and the child will live the life of a deity if she stays true to him, but will be a sad mortal if she does not. Her sisters come back and convince Psyche she is sleeping with a serpent that will kill her after she has his child. They tell her to sneak a knife and a lamp to bed with her and to use the two to cut of the serpent's head while he is sleeping that night. When Psyche shines the light on her husband she finds out he is Cupid and cannot bring herself to kill him. However, the lamp drips hot oil on him and wakes him up. Once he learns what Psyche was planning to do and that she did not heed his warning he flew her out of his palace and left her(see image above). She went to visit her sisters and tell them what happened and they both jumped to their death trying to get Cupid to claim them as his brides.

I really like the way this story emphasizes trust. It also includes the lesson that just because you cannot see a good thing in front of you doesn't mean you shouldn't trust it. You also learn that sometimes you put your trust in the wrong people.

Topics For Project

Topic: Christmas stories!

Comments: I really, really, really love Christmas. I know there are all sorts of Christmas stories I could take and make a good Storybook project out of!

Possible stories: I really love “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” by Dr. Seuss. There are also so many classic stories that I could really give more life to.

Bibliography Information:

Sample Story: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Book Author: Dr. Seuss





Topic: T’was the Night before Finals

Comments: Okay, so this is like keeping in theme with Christmas stories, but instead of making them about Christmas I want to spin them to be like horror stories about finals week for college students. I would use various Christmas story ideas (like the title of my topic), but change them to have to do with finals week.

Possible stories: I would definitely like to use a version of T’was the Night before Christmas. And I could even use “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” but spin it as “How the Professor Stole Christmas” or something like that.

Bibliography Information:

Sample Story: T’was the Night before Christmas

Author: Clement Clarke Moore



Topic: Native American Stories

Comments: I mentioned earlier in one of my posts that I was interested in the Native American stories in the Untextbook. So I did some research on all the Native American stories (this took forever because there are a ton) and I just find them all so interesting! As a child my poppy always told me Native American stories and I would really like to read through these and try to find the ones he told me.

Possible stories: There was one that my poppy always told me about the stageny. Which is considered to be a form of black magic that allows men to shape shift. Most traditionally a stageny takes the form of an owl and hunts children, but the research I did on this shows that other versions of this story have them changing into other animals. There is even Girl Scout Murders here in Oklahoma had stageny involved in them. The investigators questioned a medicine man named Crying Wolf and asked if he thought the suspect, Gene Hart, was a stageny.

Bibliography information:

Sample story:The Indian Who Wrestled with a Ghost

Author: Teton

From the Untextbook(I found this interesting because it involves an owl)

(Stageny: from the Untextbook)

Topic: Something with the Canterbury Tales

Comments: I absolutely love these tales. I think these would be better for individual stories more than a project, however. I do not really have any great ideas for this….I just knew I needed another idea and I really have my top three that I am leaning towards already listed.

Bibliography:

The Canterbury Tales
Geoffry Chaucer

Essay: Aesop's Stories for Children

The stories I read this week are all children’s stories. The title of it is literally Aesop for Children (Winter). For the most part, I can see where they are children’s stories. However, there are some aspects in them that I think a child would over look. As a child, you are very focused on the face value of stories. If you read a story about a wolf who steals a shepherd’s flock(Wolf and Shepherd), then that is what you would assume the story is about. Which in a sense it is, but there are also the underlying life lessons you can learn from these stories.

I think these stories would be good for children because most of them involve talking animals. As a child, I was always very interesting in stories that involved talking animals. I think stories that have an interesting aspect to them, such as talking animals, are good for children. I also think stories that teach a lesson are good for children. Especially when they do so inconspicuously because I know that when I was a kid I hated anything that I thought was school work or anything of the sort. The Aesop fables do just that. Because when you think you are reading about a talking cat who is pretending to be a doctor to get into the bird’s house to eat them, you’re really reading about how to always be careful of who you trust and let in because they could be there to harm you.

For the most part, I believe the language is appropriate. There are a few stories that may be a little harsh/gruesome for kids, but there are not very many. They do a good job of keeping it appropriate for children and I think that is because they are written for children because I mean it is in the title.



I do not remember reading any of these stories as a child. Well maybe I did, but not in the way that they were told here. I remember stories with the same moral, but they were not the same story. The stories I remember from my childhood did not really make sense to me until I got older and heard them again. I think as a child, I was just too young to understand the underlying moral of the story.

(Wolf and Shepherd: Winter)