Identify ideal characteristics for a society
Myths, epics, and fiction can tell us about the society which created them. For this unit, you will read four stories from four very different societies and time periods. They are not directly comparable in time or location but you are practicing an important skill for historians or other analysts: reading texts to understand the surrounding society. I have provided brief plot summaries for the three larger stories. These summaries are only for background to help so you don’t get lost in the stories. Your papers should be based on the actual primary sources provided below.
In this assignment, identify the main characteristics of the hero or villain in two of these stories. The hero’s characteristics (brave, loyal, smart, etc.) would be ideal characteristics, as would be the opposite of the villain’s characteristics (cowardly, disloyal, stupid, etc.). For example, there are stories created about two hundred years ago of George Washington being a very honest and very religious man. Those characteristics were valued by Americans of that time period. (They might still be valued; that’s a different analysis.)
