A comparison and contrast of myths around the world After reading a variety of myths from three different places around the world, take a...

The reason we study myths is that they can reveal much about the culture that generated them. More specifically, myths help explain how people viewed the world. This includes the things they feared, their values, and their general outlook on life. Myths are stories that people told each other in order to explain things that were otherwise beyond their comprehension. A good topic for an essay might be to choose a single topic that you...

The reason we study myths is that they can reveal much about the culture that generated them. More specifically, myths help explain how people viewed the world. This includes the things they feared, their values, and their general outlook on life. Myths are stories that people told each other in order to explain things that were otherwise beyond their comprehension. A good topic for an essay might be to choose a single topic that you find in a few of the myths. If we look at the myths of the ancient Egyptians, for example, we see that there are several—the Osiris and Isis story, in particular—that focus on death and rebirth. As a result, you can look at this myth, which tells the story of a great king who was murdered and mutilated by his evil brother and then reanimated by his wife, as evidence for the ways ancient Egyptians tried to deal with the very difficult topic of death. How did the Norse understand death? You could look at the stories of Ragnarok and the death of Balder, the latter a story in which his brother tried to have him released from Hel, to get some idea of the ways they understood death as a transition into a new world. Another point of comparison might be found between the malevolent deities Seth and Loki, both of whom sow evil and discord in the world. They play crucial roles in almost all of the myths listed in the question, suggesting that people in both societies grappled for an understanding of why people do evil things. The point is that most of these myths deal with fundamental human concerns. A good essay would pick one or two of these issues to see how they addressed them.