Third Class

After class, just read "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", and have already read before the story of Demeter and Persephone. To be honest, I don't like Bob Dylan, and his lyrics don't make one bit of sense. The poem "It's" (I'm getting better at this shortening thing) describes a bunch of random scenes including "Yonder stands your orphan with his gun" which is impossible, since if it was your kid, for him to be an orphan you would have to be dead. He then talks about sailors rowing home, army men going home, and the "vagabond" who is knocking on your door, wearing your old hand-me-down clothes. And then you strike a match for some reason. Sense? No. Good poem? No. I don't see a single connection between this and the previous stories we read about a man fooling women and killing them.

However, the myth of Demeter and Persephone is one of the most commonly told Ancient Greek tales. It is an aetiological description of how the seasons came to be. Persephone, daughter of harvest goddess Demeter, is one day pulled down into the underworld by Hades, who is allowed to do this because Zeus is alright with it. Demeter starts looking for her daughter, and doesn't eat or do her godly duties, which means that earth's crops start dying. Zeus is not longer alright with this, and sends Hermes to demand that Persephone be returned. He agrees, but only if she has suffered as her mother did and not eaten anything for 8 days. Turns out, she ate pomegranate seeds and its because of this that she spends part of the year with Demeter and part of it with Hades.

This myth has elements that are similar to the previous stories about the Pied Piper and Connie that we read, including the trickery used by Hades to plant a cosmic flower that would allow him to tear open the earth and pull Persephone into the underworld. However, this is much different from the story of Connie because Connie was much more in control than Persephone ever was. Hades was not only one of the most powerful gods of Ancient Greece, he was also Zeus' brother, and had his consent to wed Persephone, so she never really had a voice in the matter. In any case, the stories we read before are rather similar to this one, which hints at the possibility of this being another part of the archetype I outlined in my last post.