| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: wonderful stories which their own nurses and grandmas had told
them, and had no intention of weaving subtle allegories or
wrapping up a physical truth in mystic emblems, it follows
that they were not bound to avoid incongruities or to preserve
a philosophical symmetry in their narratives. In the great
majority of complex myths, no such symmetry is to be found. A
score of different mythical conceptions would get wrought into
the same story, and the attempt to pull them apart and
construct a single harmonious system of conceptions out of the
pieces must often end in ingenious absurdity. If Odysseus is
unquestionably the sun, so is the eye of Polyphemos, which
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: sweep of her arm, and defied her critics. They rose and
wrangled more loudly. The comedian sighed and looked
a trifle sadder and disinterested. The manager came
tripping and suggested peace. He was told to go to the
popular synonym for war so promptly that the affair
might have happened at The Hague.
Thus was the manager angered. He made a sign
with his hand and a waiter slipped out of the door. In
twenty minutes the party of six was in a police station
facing a grizzled and philosophical desk sergeant.
"Disorderly conduct in a restaurant," said the police-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: lot of cartridges. She'd never asked me for anything before. I asked her
what the devil a woman wanted with cartridges, and she said the old nigger
woman who helped carry in water to the garden said she couldn't stay and
help her any more unless she got some cartridges to give her son who was
going up north hunting elephants. The woman got over me to give her the
cartridges because she was going to have a kid, and she said she couldn't
do the watering without help. So I gave them her. I never put two and two
together.
"Well, when I heard that the Company was going to have a row with the
Matabele, I thought I'd volunteer. They said there was lots of loot to be
got, and land to be given out, and that sort of thing, and I thought I'd
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