Rebecca Lin, Period 1, 10/6/2023

Rebecca Lin

Period 1

10/06/2023

Modern Mythology 2024


Literacy & Learning

Write about your thoughts/feelings regarding any of the fiction or nonfiction covered in class.

We had just started our Mythology unit in class, and the first story I read was about Daedalus and Icarus. I have heard about this story before, in my brief unit of mythology in the fourth grade, but this time around, I felt like I was really able to understand it and connect it to the general themes in Greek mythology. Daedalus had warned Icauras about flying too low to the sea or too high to the sun, but Icaarus did not listen. As a result, the sun melted the glue off his wings and he fell into the waters and died. The first thing that came to mind was the word “hubris”, meaning excessive pride. The Greeks viewed hubris as the absolute worst flaw that someone could have. Maybe if Icarus hadn’t been too prideful, maybe he would’ve listened to his father. And maybe if he had listened to his father, he wouldn’t have flown so close to the sun. And maybe if he didn’t fly so close to the sun, his tragic death could have been avoided.


Reflect on any new information you have learned in English class by considering how that learning influences your critical perception.

Learning about the different critical theory lenses have impacted my critical perception of texts, by allowing me to interpret the literature through different perspectives . Before learning about these lenses, whenever I would come across a story or movie, I would simply interpret it by what was generally being shown. For example, when I first saw “Frozen”, I had only watched it with the thought of it being a movie for entertainment. I would've never thought to look at it through the feminist lens, as that just wasn’t the first thing that came to mind when watching. But thinking back on this movie through these lenses, I’m able to perceive the movie in a different way and grasp the underlying messages within the movie. For example, looking through the Feminist lens, the close bond between the two sisters, Elsa and Anna, can be interpreted to show how strong sisterhood is and how it is just as powerful as romantic love. With all the different critical theories in the back of my mind, I am now able to apply these lenses to different pieces of literature and perceive these stories deeper than what's only being shown at the top.


How is what you’re learning applied to any other classes/the world around you?

What I’ve been learning about, the different critical lenses, can be applied to my classes everyday. Whenever I read an article in my Government class, watch a scene in my Theatre Arts class, or even a short story in my Mythology class, I subconsciously apply these critical lenses to these pieces of work. Now, my understanding and analysis of these works is much more profound than it was 2 months ago. The other day, we were presenting clips from movies that were directed by popular directors in Theatre Arts and I watched the scene from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” where the prince comes to Snow White and kisses her to wake her up from the Evil Queen’s spell. I immediately thought about how this could be analyzed through the feminist lens, as it falls right into the traditional trope of a prince coming to rescue a princess. These different critical lenses are now following me, allowing me to get a different perspective of the literary world around me.