10th Blog Post

In my Classical Cultures class, we have been examining several different myths this semester. The one that really caught my attention is Clouds. The moral behind this myth is very much relevant to our lives today. It is about moral order. In our society, we follow a set of orders or guidelines that keeps us stable. Without them we will be unstable and destructive. Clouds portrays the life of a man who tries to get the easy way out of paying in debts. He tried to use a bad judgement, and make a good one out of it. In life, there are people who try to justify wrongdoings no matter how bad they are, and this is one reason why Clouds is significant in regards to life. The man eventually realized that that was not the way to navigate his way around things. The moral of the story is, that we all learn from our mistakes.

The Woman Warrior.

Since this class, I've noticed that the literary texts we have been reading in regards to Chinese culture, has an underlying tone of feminism. These tales are very uplifting to women in the sense that they do not perpetuate the idea that women aren't capable of doing things that may seem unusual in society. The article portrays the story of a girl, who sets out to find her inner strength or warrior. She had to put aside a lot of things she love to accomplish that. Undoubtedly, this was not a very easy thing to do. She had to learn new ways of adjusting and coping with this new lifestyle. This story was made in reference to Mulan, who is said to be an "icon." Both of these figures challenge the norms within their society and therefore are seen as instrumental in the way gender roles are examined.

Trickster Tales

Tricking seems to play a pivotal role in fables and folktales. We as humans perform that same act in many different ways in our lives. Playing tricks can be a playful thing, and also a learning lesson. "The Wolf and the Mink." is one of my favorite stories that we have covered. I enjoyed reading about how carefully the wolf was able to cleverly trick the mink into thinking that he ate the fish, which in actuality it was the wolf himself. The morals behind these stories are often displayed and lived in our society today, and this is what makes them interesting to read.