Noah & Babel Week 3: Hebrew Bible - Assignments - Reading - Resources - Images

Reflections Essay

Choose one of the essay topics for this week. You will find the topics listed down at the bottom of this page; scroll down to find them. If you want to write on a different topic, contact the instructor first (make sure you do that at least one day before the deadline so that you can receive an answer back in time).

Links to stories. You need to provide a link back to each of the specific stories that you discuss in your essay.

Image. You are required to include at least one image with the story, along with a link to the webpage where you found the image, plus information about the image. You are free to re-use the images you find at the course website, or you can choose some other image to use that you find on the internet. Remember: even if you are re-using an image from the course website, you need to provide image information about it.

Title. You need to include the words "Essay for Week ___" in the title you give to the post, along with a title for your actual story (for example, "Essay for Week 2: Dangerous Magic in Egyptian Legends")

Length. Your Storytelling post needs to be a minimum of 300 words long (maximum 1000 words). Make sure you do a spellcheck and a word count, and that you proofread your post by reading it out loud.

When you are done, complete the Gradebook Declaration.

Crime and Justice. Was the motif of "crime" an important element in any of this week's stories? Who was the criminal and what kind of crime(s) were committed? Do the stories promote the idea of justice? Or do the stories promote the idea that life is unfair and that there is no justice, or that crime can be something glamorous? Who were the agents of justice in these stories? Who were the criminals? Was revenge also a motif in the stories? How do the motifs of crime and justice in this week's stories compare to the other stories you have read this semester? Make sure you make specific references to at least three different stories in your essay.

Parents and Children / Brothers and Sisters. Many myths and folktales are about the relations between parents and their children, or between brothers, or brothers and sisters. What impression did you have of the parents (mothers, fathers) and siblings (brothers, sisters) from this week's readings? Do you think that these parent-child or sibling relationships were an important theme for the stories? Were there some specific family behaviors that were being promoted by the stories? Some specific family behaviors that were being discouraged? Make sure you make specific references to at least three different stories in your essay.

Inspiration? Guidance? Model? Were there any characters in the stories of this unit who provided you with a kind of model to follow - either a positive model to imitate, or a negative model to avoid? Are there some incidents in the stories that give you insight into something that has happened in your own life or in the life of someone close to you? Are there values or qualities that you see in the characters that are values or qualities you would like to have more of in your own life? What valuable message or meaning did you find in this week's stories? Make sure you make specific references to at least three different stories in your essay.

Recurring Motifs. Folktales and myths are built up of "motifs" - common elements of plot and character that can be used and re-used over and over again, combined and recombined in different ways in order to create variants on existing stories. Did you see some motifs that recurred more than once in this week's stories? Some character types that repeated over and over again? Events in the plots that were similar between one story and another? Other things that repeated from story to story? Discuss these recurring motifs, and explain how these motifs are useful in creating a story. Make sure you make specific references to at least three different stories in your essay.

Assess. Think back to your Starting Assumptions this week and your Starting Assumptions for the course in general. Did anything you read or studied this week make a big change in your starting assumptions? What surprised you the most? What story made the most vivid impression on you? Was there a story that didn't grab you at all or that you didn't understand? Did this unit fit into your expectations for a course in Mythology and Folklore? If you were going to continue with this topic, what kind of research and reading would you want to do? What questions would you want to find answers to? Make sure you make specific references to at least three different stories in your essay.

An Image. Take a look at the images from this unit that are listed below. Pick one image that you really like and talk about it in detail. Make sure that you connect it with a specific story. What part of the story does it illustrate? Does it match the version of the story we read for class? What do you see in this image at first? What details emerge after you study it more carefully? Does the image fit with your own imaginings about the stories, or does the image surprise you, contradicting what you expected? Make sure you include the URL of the image page in your answer. Choose from one of these images (click on the image for more information):

Poetic Speech and Style. Some forms of folklore and mythology rely heavily on poetic speech or other distinctive, stylized speech: puns and other word-play; rhyme and other forms of repetition; hyperbole (exaggeration); riddles and other metaphorical language; magic spells and other ritual speech; etc. Was there a distinctive style of language used in this week's readings? What kinds of poetic speech were used? Was the style of speech an important element of the stories? Did the use of stylized language sometimes make the reading hard to understand? What were the clues you used to understand the meaning of difficult passages? Make sure you make specific references to at least three different stories in your essay.

Sexual Conduct and Misconduct. What seem to have been the rules for sexual behavior based on the stories that you have read here? Do you see any consistencies in the way that sexual desire is depicted in these stories? Are the sexual desires of men basically like / unlike the sexual desires of women? Are women held to a different standard of conduct than men? What are the sexual taboos and how are they reinforced? Are there any points of comparison that you can make with the sexual norms and sexual taboos in our society today? Make sure you make specific references to at least three different stories in your essay.