Final Exam Review

So essentially, know Vittoria's blog by heart:) But seriously, she has the bulk of the material from which the material for the test will be drawn. Here are a few of the highlights I caught during the blur of review.

25 questions on the entire exam
The most important line in The Magus: “All that is past possesses our present…
Logos = Word (creative word, word that creates the world) Capitalized W not an accident
Vitoria’s wonderful story of the Kangaroo
1 question from each 6 group presentations
What was the song from the closing credits of group 5 presentation? “White Wedding”
Who was Oprah compared to in Group 2? Zeus
From Group 1 – How many different versions of one myth are there? Infinite
Group 3 – The title from The Shameful Truth came from The Magus.
Group 6 –What was each person’s character in the group? The pirate, irish, Viking, cowboy, Egyptian, chinese
Group 4 - That’s all folks. Darrell in our class had the best one liners, both are mythological, refer to both the end. Here we go again.

Read blogs about individual presentations and see if there is anything that really hits out! Primary passage in The Magus all that is past possesses the present.
Every answer is a form of death. P. 626
Cicada
Ritual of Adonis (were asked to look up and google) death of a person at too young an age.
Sacred – sacrifice to make sacred
Masque a certain type of theater. Look at Tori’s Blog
The collective unconscience
Eliade story of Chung Tzu and the butterfly
Something becomes a sacred action when it is in remembrance of the divine.
The journey up is a mythology
The god game
Orpheus and Eurydice. Divine musician. “Black Orpheus”
The Bhagavada Gita
The Swerve Greenblatt
Eschatolgy
Metempsychosis
Parabola

Asides: I'm not entirely sure if this was just mentioned to be mentioned
Muses taught humans how to sing
We are only here on this earth to do one thing and that is to sing.

And We Start Again...

"one had to go back several steps, and start again; and know the place for the first time." (Fowles 650)

To say that we are ending this chapter in our education seems almost unfair to the whole theme of the class. Mythologies never end and instead weave back unto themselves and rather than acting as a tree with many branches that reach out and have distinct and final ends, I would argue that the stories are more appropriately traced with a bush where the branches invoke confusion as to where one stops and the other ends and where they appear to double over and under and circle around to a branch seemingly far away but touched for even just a moment. Moments mean everything in myth and a moment can change a lifetime.

Reflecting on My Efforts

Looking back over my paper, there are so many more elements that I wish I could incorporate. In actuality, I had an entire sheet of paper covered in simply page numbers of the quotes that directly referenced appearance versus reality. I have yet to dive into uncovering the passages with more hidden implications. Here is the list of page numbers that helped influence my topic of discussion for my final paper.

15, 34, 39, 40, 56, 76, 95, 99, 105-6, 119, 120, 127, 132, 137, 148, 164, 170, 209, 219, 231, 235, 239, 267, 271, 279, 282, 285, 289, 302, 309, 310, 312, 325, 338, 339, 362, 381, 399, 400, 404, 409, 411, 427, 449, 489, 499, 516, 532, 539, 552, 560, 569, 589, 598, 601, 606, 627, 629, 643, 647, 654

Knowledge of Self

Confusing Confusion

There is a question that we are drilled with almost from the moment when speech is realized. Although it is presumably facilitating our growth and easing our attitude towards the hard decisions that face us in life, it seems almost as if we are being forced into conformity and into a reality that perhaps is not truly our own. Choices are made that perhaps negate the true underlying desires of the one in question and the misrepresentations and appearances of felicity begin. Reality becomes less of a truth and more of a façade by which the lies that began to creep like vines and weave into complex tangles of deceit cling to. This harsh view of reality seems just that at first, some cynical interpretation of the beauty that one sees every day in the world. However, if one takes a closer look at the presumed relationships that satiate a need for interaction throughout the day, certain truths are revealed that highlight the infiltration of appearance into the assumed world of reality. Questions begin to arise in correlation with this realization pertaining to the lies that are being accepted and the truths that are being withheld amongst supposed friends and lovers. These notions of misguided acceptance of personas and misplaced trust of a false reality saturate the pages of The Magus, a novel by John Fowles that profoundly addresses what happens when one fails to first know oneself.
This tale of misconstrued realities even opens with an admonition by the main identity in question, Nicholas Urfe, that he himself “began to discover [he] was not the person [he] wanted to be” (15). His life had adopted a course from the onset that he had not found favorable and thus Urfe had adopted a cynical view on not only his role in the greater scheme of life’s reality, but also in the seemingly miniscule realities of those that met him at a various moments in his life, for it only takes a moment to send the course askew. Throughout the rest of the novel and from the mouths of countless other “players” in the reality of Urfe’s life, the lines of conventional reality and time begin to blur and the appearances of people, place, and time pervade the realm in which the most profound realizations are made.
The most profound analogy for this multiplicity of realities and supposed understanding of them comes in a reference to a door: “It was like walking through a door, going all round the world, and then walking through the same door but a different door” (240). Characters are constantly being warned or warning not to trust what is shown because it is forever altering and changing and the lies compound to form convoluted interpretations of an appeared reality. This dichotomy between appearance and reality is vital in understanding not only the farce or experiment the magician Conchis has imposed on Urfe, but also in understanding basic human relations as a whole. The basest form of this argument against reality stems from the need for a person first to not be able to lie to himself before eradicating his life of the lies around him.
However the complexities of this issue transcend the pages of this book and apply not only to mythology but to contemporary realities being formed this very second. One has to think of all the lies that have been said by him or to him whether for noble reasons or not. Either way, there are crrent realities crumbling and falling into quicksand constantly from both past and present. Old histories thought to be fact are sometimes falsified and new truths are verified. Although a passage is recalled that references that not all truths are indeed verifiable which in itself submits an entirely new complexity.
Appearances in conjunction with reality create chaos whre reality without appearances ignites boredom. Without any mystery, there is no thrill of discovery or revelation. However, to assume reality in an appearance and accept appearance as reality reveals the true crossroads of which myths are written. All the gods were fans of revealing no the reality but the appearance. Zeus for example showed himself in at least four different forms before revealing his true identity. And when humans adopt the mask or "masque" the charades begin and feeling are often harmed in the seeking of the hidden.