Final Exam Information

BLOGS DUE FRIDAY AT NOON!!!

Looked at Tori's blog, she's got the information you need to know for exam!

Sinister- Left handed people:P

Group Questions

group 1: How many different versions of myth our there?

• infinite possibilities!

group 2: Who was Oprah compared to?

• Zeus

group 3: Where does the title of our presentation "The Shameful Truth" come from?

• The Magus

group 4: Darrell had two amazing one liners that refer to the end, What are they?

• That's All Folks! 
• Here We Go Again

group 5: What was the song in the credits?

• White Wedding by Billy Idol

group 6: What were the 6 characters in group?

• Pirate, Cowboy, Irishman, Viking, Chinese, & Egyptian

Individual Presentations

• We referred to in a lot of our presentations that "All that is past possesses our present."

• Every answer is a form of death- JERROD WANTS THIS ON THE TEST SOMEHOW!

• Ritual of Adonis- death of person at too young an age. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, Dimebag Darrell...

OTHER THINGS ON FINAL!

Sacri = Sacred

We end where we begin!

Eliade- butterfly dream... ChungTzu wakes up not knowing if he is a man dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a man...

Remembrance of divine- makes it a sacred action

In the god game, everything is fiction!

Orpheus & Eurydice-Eurydice steps on a snake and dies, goes to underworld. Orpheus, the musician/ husband, goes to the underworld to retrieve Eurydice and is to never look back. He looks back! thats why we have mythology and now she is stuck in the underworld!

Bhagavad Gita-

The father was going to die soon, and had to pick a son to take over the thrown. The older son was blind, he could not be king. The younger son took over. Older son didn't like that and was going to kill his brothers family. Eventually there was a gamble between the families and the older son won. The younger son Arjuna GOOD GUYS and his family were banished to the woods for 15 years and upon their return he was supposed to get the kingdom. Older blind son didn't like that BAD GUYS!. Krishna the god told Arjuna he would battle and win his kingdom back, this he did not want to do. He did not want to kill family. Krishna being the god already knew what would take place in the future and Arjuna did as his path said he would. He had no choice!

Parabola- "Coming in off the side"

The example in class about someone being hurt in front of the church, the priest was busy he had a luncheon on campus to get to, the person you expected to help didn't. the person you didn't expect did!

The Swerve- book by Stephen Greenblatt about finding the manuscript of "On the Nature of Things" by Lucretius, in a library. Manuscript was the way of the modern world so nobody was supposed to see it!

Ant and the Grasshopper-

grasshopper played the fiddle and had fun, didn't prepare for winter. Ants worked really hard and never had any fun. Who is doing the right thing? Have fun and be carefree or work hard to get ahead?

Eschatology- a belief concerning death, or the ultimate destiny of mankind

Cicadas - all they did was sing beautiful songs, started as humans, they died because all they could do was sing, no eating, drinking, or sleeping. god made them into cicadas so they can sing forever!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST.... Sexson says... "DO NOT BECOME NICHOLAS URFE!!!"

Wonderful class, very interesting, it was definitely something new for me to experience, and I loved it.

Day 3: Individual Presentations! THE END!

12/8/11

Abby

• Conchis and Fowles relationship
• All that is past possesses our present!! BEST QUOTE IN MAGUS!
• Answers are a form of death to the reader
• if book ended/ had an ending Nicholas would have died
• We are all stupid like Nicholas, looking @ Nick is looking at yourself
• Come to terms with never knowing 

I love that idea of just letting things be, not needing answers but understanding knowing them means nothing anyways.

Jessica

• The monster in the maze
• Who is the monster? Nicholas... WE ARE THE MONSTER!
• weaved Calasso into understanding of Magus

Read book: The Illustrated Man- living tattoos on body, each one tells a story

Jennifer

• Myth and the word made flesh
• "we are bone collectors" finding buffalo skulls
• give grace - power of eucharist
• god did not withdraw, all is waiting
• T.S. Eliot poem The Dry Salvages

EXAM Q: Logos = Word

Wena

• Olympics - symbol of peace among nations- passing the torch
• Heracles, Pelops started games by killing a guy in a chariot
• Wrestling was started with Zeus fighting his father Kronos
• Precedent behind every action... The Olympics are because of the gods and classical mythology!

OLYMPIC GAMES ARE IN LONDON 2012

Jill

• focused on underworld
• chthonic path... to underworld and back up
• Nick goes through this death and rebirth... except doesn't really grow from experience.
• he focuses on mistrust within others, instead of seeing the mistrust in himself.

American superheros fail @ pattern Fixated & Stuck!!!!

 Danielle

• Nicholas doesn't know himself
• reality could be appearance in facade
• "Know Thyself" how little we know of ourselves

Maryann?

• Mermaids found in India
• Star wars was written for mythological interpretation/ imagination
• Andre the Giant - famous wrestler connection to Princess Bride
• Handed out a mythological newspaper... Olympian Gazette

Very interesting presentations today! I can't say that I thought there were real mermaids and the corpse sure doesn't look elegant like Arial ... Disney changes things they should not... REAL LIFE ISN'T ALWAYS PRETTY!

Day 2: Individual Presentations of The Magus

12/6/11

Jarrod- Parenting and Mythology

• Uranos & Kronos, Saturn ate his children
• Gaia- violent taking sickle and castrating father
• Rhea put Zeus in cave - Zeus got help from Wisdom(Metis)
• "There is no such thing as good parenting" Dr. Sexson
• Freudian psychology

Lucy - divine infatuation Urfe posessessed

• Life is a game of chess- Urfe is a pawn
• Ufe and Oedipus- Appointment in Samara
• return to destiny

Zach- relationships to appeal to audience = mythology compelling (book on beach)

• 3 relationships- Nick and Alison= Cupid and Psyche, Nick and Isis/Lily/Julie = Hades and Persephone, Nick and Conchis = Zeus and Apte

 

• Love and Parenting=== All mythological Dr Sexson

Sam

• Magus is world- political leaders and ungovernable forces of past.
• Obsession with judgement and status quo.
• Ultimately created through myth.
• Constantly searching for definition of itself, all is planned

THE MATRIX!!! 

Quentin

• Hidden agendas/ double lives
• "Heart of Darkness" agenda- veil over all other characters
•  Conchis - Hades conceals identity (deceptive)
• "We are by no means united but we are united" in MAGUS during the removal of the masks in judgement. Exemplifies mystery
• Veil is waiting to be removed but at the same time will never be removed

Jeremy

• Nacholas issue with free will.
• "The Adjustment Bureau" Philip K. Dick 
• never run into girl ever again, people wont let them be together. Main Character is going through somebody else's plan. 
• Humans believe they have free will: only the appearance of free will
• would you have stayed in California or was it destined you would end up here. No switching paths?
• We are in labrynth... all part of giant game

Sherwood

• In Illo Tempore Beginnings, Middles, Ends
• Beginning = Escape, Middles= Painful, Ends = Transformed 
• Beginning is included in the end 

Andy

• trying to do something with is life 
• Mysterious, stuck in black cloud. Fail through hero path.
• "Still playing on their script" says Alison to Nick in The Magus.
• stagnant character in whole novel regardless of which path, script has been written for you...
• caught him in fog.

Tori

• in order of the questions she asked these were my answers... 7, 63, 9, 4, d, Denmark, K, Kangaroo, O, Orange.... 
• Bagavagita? don't know how to spell... Knishna determines what everybody does
• Conchis & Knishna = puppet master
• Nicholas & Ishuna = puppets
• exploited knowledge
• FREEDOM & Determinism- master of behavioral psychology

Ashley

• Dante's Inferno- deceive someone cutting bond between two lovers.
• Nicholas and Zeus - travel heros pattern
• dangling- we have heard this many times in everyday life
• Boy meets girl, boy pushes girl away, boy realizes he loves girl, BLANK - dependant on person. PREDICTABLE! out of prediction, into freedom

Darrell

• womanizer, Hercales (can't benefit from women)
• Jason (hero), Thesius (labrynth) speculate out of maze if stayed with Alison, Oedipus back to game , Back to Thesius, Here we go again, Achilles going after Helen, underworld - physically restrained , a few minor details differ, 1,000 faces heard that story before!
• Appointment in Samara- Deja Vu , glitch in loop of film- THE MATRIX!!!
• HERE WE GO AGAIN! Sexson guessed the title of his paper!

Lauren 

• 3 regimes of mankind Conviviality, Rape, Indifference
• rejection of female Venus and Adonis
• wrath of gods abducted instead of rape
• "you sound like Adonis have you been (b)goared?"

• The Great Pan is Dead

Matt

• 7 Genious' are also INSANE!
• "Existence of mysteries" Miracles or disasters we have to embrace insantity!

Justin

• Myth archeotypes ... Nick = Hero, Lily/ Julie/ Rose/ Alison= Helen/ Medusa = Deceitful female
• carried into modern day literature

Hero is used positively in modern society 

myth hero - wrong, problematic, sexually driven

Day 1: Individual Presentations on The Magus

Christine

• Fairy tales, Grimm, and The Magus
• stories bridge generations together
• All countries have similar stories (Walt Disney)

Theresa

• Star Trek- Who Mourns of Adonias?
• Apollo holds ship takes Caroline with him
• GOOD QUOTE: We have forgotten all the things that give life meaning. 
• Paradise is not what they expect.

GOOGLE: Mourning for Adonis ....

What does it mean?

Death and Rebirth

Megan

• Main female characters did conchis' bidding for him
• women = strength and deceit
• mythological women= mysterious 
• passing female secrets

Courtney

• women initation 
• Hercales, Thesius, Persius
• Calasso pg. 19 

Juniper

• Gods and Participants in game 
• Lily/Julie= Persephone GOOD & RIGHT
• Joe= Hades
• Nick and Alison its his view of sex that is the problem
• Somebody somewhere is watching

Madison

• We are all entering a labrynth 
• Stranger than Fiction- movie Will Ferrell
• reality is second to new reality- we're drawn to it.

Eric

• The Lesser Blessed- comparison to Magus
• telling stories therapeutic 
• The dead can live by love.

Rosemary

• The Proscenium of the Magus revealed... revealing words on cards AWESOME!
•  

Kevin

• missed this one....

Bailey

• past possesses our present - future is predetermined

Parker

• rituals in Bourani confine him
• Julie- infatuated in 3 days world was reinvented
• unrealistic dream- couldn't stay with Alison
• Beginnings, Middles, Ends

Stephani

• reflection into future- All knowing
• you are constantly changing - crack in mirror is never the same
• gods are here in cracks in the mirror, Love, sky, all precious gifts are said to be the gods around us.

Life's Mystery

Life’s Mystery

       The future is a mystery waiting to be unfolded. Sometimes it seems predictable but one wrong move may change the game, or maybe the outcome won’t change at all. In The Magus, Nicholas Urfe is the main character in a game called the “god game”. Urfe must think about every move he makes. Maurice Conchis, the magician or the sorcerer, must help Urfe see a side of him that he has never cared to see. Conchis does this by manipulating Nick’s actions, predetermining what he will do and constantly staying one step ahead of him. In The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, this is explained as “the precedence behind every action (Calasso, 383)” as in The Magus, Conchis explains, “All that is past possesses our present (Fowles, 311).” Every footprint has already been made; the future has already been planned, and this is what Conchis is doing to Urfe to help him correct his imperfections.

      Maurice Conchis has been playing this “god game” for years. Each year with a different “victim,” as Urfe would put it. Conchis is trying to teach these individuals something they chose not to see in their everyday lives. He manipulates them based on their circumstances, what imperfections they need to change, though they do not have to change if they don’t want to. John Leverrier was one of Conchis’ pawns from earlier years. Though Leverrier will not specify to what happened when he played, it seems as if he learned a valuable lesson and was not willing to spoil Urfe’s experience by giving him answers. Leverrier states, “My dear man, you don’t want charity from me. You want confessions I am not prepared to make (Fowles, 571).” Conchis knew Urfe would go to Leverrier, and try to push him for a confession; much like Conchis knew Urfe would wander to his home after finding T.S. Eliot’s Collected Book of Poems, strategically placed under a towel and fins where Urfe would be sure to investigate. The passage Nicholas opens up to, underscored in red ink, is the beginning of the game of his life.

       Upon opening up the book Urfe finds on the beach he reads, “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time (Fowles, 69).” Conchis was setting him up to read this passage for a specific reason. It could have awoken Urfe at that moment if he wasn’t so self-centered but instead he wanders further to find answers. Conchis set him up perfectly; he knew exactly what would make Nicholas want more. He must be taken out of his element, pushed out of his boundaries to experience the effects of the “god game.” Conchis faces him with lies and deceit, unable to trust anyone he spoke to. He does this so Urfe will realize these are similarities he should see in himself. Conchis planned out characters, and knows how they must treat him to make him react in a certain manner. Nicholas has imperfections, which he sees in the trial, such as egocentric deceitful, shallow, and vain.

      Nicholas displays these traits on a personal level, in his relationship with Alison throughout the book. He leaves her to go to Greece, ignores her letters, gets intimate with other women, physically abuses her, and tells her to bug off. Soon after, he finds out she has committed suicide and starts to feel remorse and guilt for the way he had mistreated her. Alison is an actress in Conchis’ game to show Urfe his imperfections. As Nicholas and Julie, another actress, discuss what is taking place on Bourani she states, “The place of mystery in life. Not taking anything for granted. A world where nothing is certain. That’s what he’s trying to create here (Fowles, 339).” It is as if she is pushing him to go with it, whatever happens is happening for a reason. Though Urfe didn’t realize Alison was participating in this until much later, once he does he feels anger and has many questions, questions that will never be answered. He must find his own answers from inside himself, not by asking others.

       Showing Urfe his past by utilizing the present was a great way to prove his narrow-mindedness. He can’t stop dwelling in everything that Conchis, Julie/ Lily, and Alison have done to him instead of focusing on why they have done this to him. While questioning Lily de Seitas and calling their actions evil she asks, “are you absolutely sure our actions have been nothing but evil (Fowles, 604)?” If he would have known what they were doing the ending wouldn’t have turned out the same way and he wouldn’t have learned anything from the game. Every action Conchis made was planned only to help Urfe come to a realization. Sometimes the truth hurts, but doesn’t create a change in character. Urfe had to be completely stripped of what he knows and turn to what is now, the present, in order to believe there is a reason for their actions. What this game has done, is only evil if there is no learning from it; as Urfe disregards the purpose and continues to be selfish, and vain, he will take nothing from his experience in Bourani.

  

       This game can be considered sick and evil, or it could be considered helpful and refreshing, depending on the player. Choosing to see the good in it is something not everyone can do. Conchis took Nicholas out of his nest, sent him through a wild initiation, and brought him his future. As Conchis takes Urfe through many changes, he shall end up where he started, knowing nothing more, but being a new man. “The end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time (Fowles, 69).” It was a mystery in the beginning and continues throughout, as the mystery of the future can never be unfolded until you get there, which makes it the present.

Groups 5 & 6 Tuesday

Group 5- Amazing acting, loved the way they threw in a bunch of the words we have learned in class, Awesome filming... it was like watching a movie :P Bonus points ++ for POPCORN! The dog was adorable, and the costumes were great too.

Group 6- The funerals was pretty interesting. I liked seeing all of the different cultures thrown together, fighting over how to properly bury poor dead Kyle Miller. All of you were hilarious, I thought it was a cool point of view... Apple juice was delicious and so were the cookies:D

Thursday 12-1 Last Names A - H
Tuesday   12-6     ""              I -S?
Thursday  12-8     ""            T-Z
approx.

Have paper ready to hand in after presentation... No longer than 5 minutes!!
Good Luck!

Notes

Seperation, initiation, return - not specific enough for paper

completely planned/ seemingly unplanned - don't read paper word for word

practice in front of mirro

chose specific important parts of book

Dont use words LIKE & STUFF

25 to 30 blogs by the end

15-18 Startlingly awesome blogs

quality of blog/ engaged blog!

Stranger that Fiction

An IRS auditor suddenly finds himself the subject of narration only he can hear: narration that begins to affect his entire life, from his work, to his love-interest, to his death.

How did it all begin? Calasso god abducted bull

curse or gift of the alphabet- Cadmus

MOST IMPORTANT LINE IN MAGUS pg 311 "All that is past possesses our present."

masque --> music dancing stage professional actors hired

Nick- all staged deconstructing Urfe's mind.

Conchis looks like Pablo Picasso.

Semian monkey?

Precedent behind every action-same as quote from pg 311 Magus.

Carry pressure of past with you. lives are quotidian small talk, world is present.

Hi(s)tory

-guys play with tonka trucks

mythical baggage- Urfe was unaware of

Collective Unconscious

Carl Jung.  It is  a part of the unconscious mind

  the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience. "the collective unconscious collects and organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a particular species."(WIKI)

 I have trap door to birth? also everyone else's baggage

its all been planned, choreographed

every man must make a trip to see Persephone in the underworld.

Creator, Preserver, & Destroyer

"Every answer is a kind of death" Magus, Lily De' Seitas says to Nicholas on pg 626

Impersonal, not about you... Visit with Lily and Roses mother painful discovery- it's not about us. Don't stop being you just start seeing it's not about everybody else.

"Betrayal is a function of deconstruction!"

I love it !!

Ignorance is stupidity, to hide behind veil

Black widow- gets male into web, uses him for something (impregnates), eat him ...

Mae West- devouring female... no soul

gives him good time, devours him.... JULIE is a Black Widow

Eliade- Taoism

--> dreamed he was a butterfly, enjoying himself he woke as a man and didn't know if he was dreaming of being a butterfly or butterfly dreaming of being a man.