2/26/20 Salma Torky PD 7

2/26/20 Salma Torky Period 7

Modern Mythology 2020

2/26/2020

Salma Torky Period 7

Aim: How are philosophies of religion and government constructed by the characters in Grendel.

Write now: Grendel speaks of various hypocrisies in chapter 8. Choose one of Gardener’s examples to discuss and include your own opinion. What is Gardener’s statement and position, and infirm, what is yours and why?

                 

We then went on to discuss the three major hypocrisies mentioned in Grendel

1. Many people only care about themselves and do everything in their own self-interest even while claiming that everyone will benefit from something.
2.  All the power lives in the top of the system. The top of this system reaps the benefits of the hard work put in by those at a lower status. 
3. Divine right comes with a moral responsibility that must be applied otherwise it is not deserved. Divine right can be seen from the perspective of many.

We then went into the analysis of the character named Red Horse. Some ideas thrown out was that the red represented communism, anger, passion, or being bloodthirsty.

We came to the conclusion that Gardener most likely named the character Red Horse either after the red horse of the apocalypse or Red Horse, the chief of Little Big Horn.

The red horse of the apocalypse represents war. In this case, it's a war for power building up to a possible revolution due to the massive power/wealth gap between the upper and lower levels in the kingdom.

Red Horse, the chief of Little Big Horn, fought in the battle of little bighorn that aimed to stop/slow down American imperialism. George Custer was a United States Army officer who fought in this battle and was sen as America’s hero similar to how Hrogthar is seen as the hero. 

We then read the quote by Red horse shown below and an article about Harlem Redlining and related them both back to Grendel.

From the quote, we could clearly see Red horses disagreement to how the government is set up as well as other key lessons such as

• Real violence is a never-ending cycle that merely changes perspective based on the oppressors and the oppressed.
• The government is meant to serve not  rule the people, instead the government has monopolized what they believe is right and wrong. As they attempt to enforce more rules to avoid tyranny they go too far and become the very thing they were trying to avoid because again they are looking out for only themselves.
• There is hypocrisy in how the people are ruled. For example, the state has power that normal people don’t such as drafting people to fight in wars they believe should be fought while people were shot down from fighting for what they believe in such as civil rights.

Ultimately everyone wants power and wants to apply their own morals but they will always be skewed and unjust.

    The class then went on to discuss redlining and how it related to Grendel.

Redlining was the denial of various services by federal government agencies, local governments as well as the private sector, to residents of specific, most notably black, neighborhoods or communities, either directly or through the selective raising of prices. Its purpose was to isolate those deemed unworthy.

    A notable person who was big on redlining was Robert Moses, Cheif of Urban Planning. He designed the southern state parkway with a weight limit as to not allow buses on it which would most certainly carrying people with less money or those of a lower class. His purpose of doing so was to isolate Long Island and keep it “sanctified”.

     

    This ultimately ties back to the write now prompt where as seen by redlining everything is being manipulated by the higherups for their own benefit under the guise that it will help all. This keeps people compliant while giving the hope that something may be done to better their life. However, this blissful ignorance does not always last and people will revolt and stand up when they realize everything told to them was a lie.

Reflection

While I’ve known that people in positions of power tend to want more and will do anything to get it this lesson helped reinforce that. It’s seen all throughout history and as we all know history repeats itself and will continue to repeat itself. This is extremely important to understand in today’s political world. Many people in my generation are happy to be ignorant about politics as long as it doesn’t directly affect them. This submissive nature allows those in power to gain more due to no one questioning or rebelling against them. While the chances of me personally changing the way things have been since the beginning of time is impossible I can still attempt to have even the slightest amount of influence if it will even slow down the power-hungry people in our world.