10/18/19 Brianna Assante PD1

Today we started off by continuing the discussion on the flower myths. We left off on Adonis, who in my opinion, has the most confusing moral. While Narcissus and Echo have ones around them, Adonis’ moral was related to the two goddesses that fought about them. When Adonis dies, Persephone “wins” because she let him go to Aphrodite for the other half of the year, and now when dead, he spends his time in the Underworld. Therefore, the moral was to let things go if you love them, because they will come back. We also went over Persephone’s story, which lead to the conclusion that women who are too smart will have demise, which could also be interpeted in a more “modern” way as ignorance is bliss.

Next, we got into today’s lesson, and we discussed the meaning of the flowers to translate it to why sorrow is beauty. My personal interpretation is that, in a modern context, it takes a lot of pain for celebrities to be beautifu. They have to work out for hours daily, manage their diet, spend hours in hair and makeup, etc. Paulina’s interpretation was that since the flowers were associated with death, they did not die in vain. When a sacrifice was made, there was always an outcome (aka pleasing the gods). Derek brought up that the Daffodil was white, which I thought was interesting because Narcissus saw himself as above everyone and too pure for others to touch, which relates to White = Purity. Daniel and Lillian touched on the balance of sorrow and beauty, without sadness you cannot have happiness and vice versa. 

The flower myths relate to death in many cultures, especially human sacrifice. Paulina brought up the fact that we leave flowers on people’s graves, in both a way to commend them and mourn them, since if you don’t revere death it is useless. Ring around the posie, for example, originates from the practice of carrying around victims for plague victims.

After finishing the lesson, we finalized the group topic. My group was stuck between Noah’s Ark and Adam and Eve, because both are relatively well known and represent the chaos of the world. Personally, I like Adam and Eve more because of the serpent mythology, and we ultimately decided on it because it followed the 7 Days of Creation. We’re gonna do a poster for the 7 days, mainly because there’s no driving story behind it; it was just God making things. The Garden of Eden then represents the first humans and the beginning of mankind. 

On Tuesday, September 10, 2019, Assante, Brianna <brianna.assante@sitechhs.com> wrote:

We discussed the TED talk that we watched yesterday, which compared memes to folklore. The speaker presented the idea that folklore, and by extension memes, showcase the culture of the people from that time period. While scholars may not pay attention to it, the information that can be gleamed is still just as important as other sources.

We then went over the summer reading project. The goal is to make a book cover that illustrates what happened prior that caused the characters to act in the way they did. We also have to make an accompanying presentation to explain our choices.