MYTHS AND ORIGIN STORIES

I am having the most fun reading with my daughter. She tore through Percy Jackson's books, and have read and reread the stories of heroes and gods that are companion tomes. I have read the Greek heroes one over the last weeks, and I was most surprised by the many details of the the demigoddess Psyche. Many of the ideas are the origins of classic Disney movies - the jealousy of a vain witch (Snow White), a sleeping curse (Sleeping Beauty), a beast (at least she thinks he is a beasts who hides his ugliness in the night but is actually the handsome Eros) (Beauty and the Beast), terrible sisters (Cinderella), and locked up in a tower (Rapunzel). 

I have told the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt in the Exodus to my daughter dozens of times. It's such a great story with so many layers. Now we saw a celebrity archeologist, Albert Lin, map out where and how that may have happened. (It was the "reed" sea, not the Red Sea, for starters.)

I am reading the Magician's Nephew, and the uncle is very creepy. But it increases my realization that great storytellers steal ideas, and  that great ideas change the narrative of storytellers from then on. From the magic rings harkening back to LOTR, and an evil queen with an enchantment lasting 1000 years, and creatures turned to statues like the effect Medusa has on those unlucky enough to look at her, he has borrowed from many great stories to make another. He describes the magician uncle as having a mop of grey hair, like the Professor Drosselmeyer in our local ballet's performance of the Nutcracker. The idea of magic being given to common people is scoffed at by the evil queen, and I think of the muggle Hermione as the exception to Hogwarts. Even this origin story of the land of Narnia is blatantly the creation as told in Genesis.

I don't know why stories are so important to me. I know that being introduced to the Greek myths in my 40s is late. I know my daughter doesn't have the same uniform exposure to the stories I grew up with. The Disney princesses that were my generation's stories were too upsetting, and the catechism of common knowledge doesn't exist anymore with the endless options on the internet. We had Sunday night 6 oclock for the Wonderful World of Disney, and Sunday School version of the Bible. 

There are more important things that I need to understand to teach her, but I love that right now, with the pressure of school gone for the summer, and lessened by the months since Covid quarantine, we have time to read and tell stories.