If you have mastered this assignment, you will receive 40 points and brainliest!
Creation Myth Writing Assignment
Creation myths are not just stories where something gets created; they are explanations of how life came to exist, how the world was formed. A myth has been defined as "a story embodying and declaring a pattern of relationship between humanity, other forms of life, and the environment" (R. J. Stewart). As such, myths and creation accounts and stories help to provide a unifying framework for the people who believe, either literally or figuratively, in this shared account. It is not a falsehood or an unscientific lie; rather, it is a poetic and shared vision.
There are a lot of components that go into an interesting myth: the cosmogony (the process of how the world was actually created), the characters involved, how they interact with each other, the environment, where it all takes place, the positive and negative and their implications, etc. Some of these mythic elements that derive from the Oral Tradition are: 1) The use of repetition for emphasis and ease of recall; 2) The use of poetic devices such as alliteration, personification, metaphor and simile, and symbolism; 3) A concern with numbers, often times repeated; 4) The power of "The Word" (Logos) and the subsequent use of concrete nouns to label important elements (both human and non-human). And I think we can all admit that some of the myths sound pretty strange and outrageous, but that’s okay. After all, explaining how life is created is not easy.
In this assignment, you will be creating your own myth: a creation myth. It’s your turn to describe how the world or something in it came into existence. Your myth should be creative, but try to remember some of the traditional elements of a creation myth. Will there be good and evil? Will there be action? Will it be “real,” or outrageous? If you would like an example, go back and watch the video on Arachne (How Spiders came to be)
The myth should meet the following requirements:
• One page typed, double-spaced
• Clean of grammatical and spelling errors
• Is original and creative, not a repeat of the myths we have studied in class
• Is organized and does not jump around.
