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Mythology: Common Understanding In The World

Decent Essays

In order to look at the reason why mythology has survived as part of our common understanding in the world today, we must first look at the reason they were written. These stories were not written for the purpose of entertaining but were intended to teach us lessons. Lessons of human stupidity, errors or failure of principles. The same mistakes that people were making back then, they are still making in today’s society. The men who wrote them such as Plato, Euripides, and Sophocles were extremely wise men that wrote myths which rarely had happy endings to teach lessons without being drab or uninteresting. If you were waiting on a happily ever after, you were sorely disappointed. The mistakes that were made usually ended in tragedy. These …show more content…

In the Story of Icarus and Daedalus, Daedalus who is the father of Icarus warned his son to not fly too close to the sun with the wings that he made Icarus. Icarus did not listen to his father and therefore suffered a horrible fate. This myth was written to show a lesson to younger people about listening to their elders. A lot of young people today seem to not want to listen to their elders, but if they were to read this tragic myth they might start listening to them a little bit more. These are just two examples of myths that teach some sort of lesson. There is a myth for almost every human mistake. These mistakes are made as much today as they were back then. In conclusion, it is obvious that etiological myths have stood the test of time when it comes to explaining some tangible aspect of the world in our common understanding. These myths hold the reader’s attention with gods, goddesses, and mythical powers only to have an underlying life lesson that show mistakes ending in tragedy. These myths are still very useful in today’s society as people make the exact same mistakes that were made at the time these myths were written. They act as a valuable tutor today and will no doubt be a valuable tutor for tomorrow. As long as humans make mistakes they can draw on the wisdom of

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