Kit-ka'ositiyi-qa-yit

Like most everyone else in the class, I am starting to feel the pressure and intimidation of reading my classmates' spectularly insightful blogs. This past evening, I have read various blogs and have often had to pause in my perusal and Google some reference or another just to follow along with the rest of the blog, especially when reading Nick's blog.
To try and negate this pressure that I have been feeling, I decided to step back from the readings and examine how I have been thinking about the blogs, the works of Shakespeare that I have read so far, and then what I feel about Shakespeare itself.
When reading the blogs besides for intimidation, I often feel a sort of recognition when my classmates mention other mythological stories that Shakespeare has brought to mind for them. I read some of these stories in Mythologies over three years ago so it is like a bittersweet memory to try and recall these stories. Sam's blog was especially helpful in this aspect. He started referencing a Japenese myth which made me recall a Native American myth, about Raven. I am not particularly sure what brought this story to mind except for the image that Sam had on his page. Lucky for me I still have my Mythology book and was able to look up the finite details that had escaped my memory as I have not yet gotten it as honed as Dr. Sexson's! The quick overview of this myth for those of you who are not familiar with it is that by changing his shape, Raven was able to steal the stars, moon, sun, and water to give to the poor ignorant humans. Raven is considered to be one of the Tricksters of mythology.

While reaquainting myself with Raven, I started to ponder the similarities between Raven and Shakespeare. We discussed in class on Tuesday and Roberto does in his blog as well, about how no one truly knows what Shakespeare looked like giving us the abiltiy to alter his form to fit the type of literature that we are reading of his. Raven altered his form to be able to steal the stars, moon, and sun. Now I am not saying that Shakespeare stole his work but it is indisputable that he did use members of the School of Night for inspiration and often characterized them or words that they had spoken. He used these characters to teach us mere normal mortals various lessons and morals and gave us our language as Raven was able to give humans the means to survive. In some stories, Raven even taught humans morals often similiar to morals that may be found in Shakespearean works if approached from the right perspective. The last similarity that I would like to point out between Shakespeare and Raven is that they are both tricksters. Raven's trickery is obvious in how he aquires his gifts to give to the humans. Shakespeare's trickery is evident in how he presents his gifts to us. Like Dr. Sexson said in class, it is often impossible to say where Shakespeare himself stood on a certain issue because we never learn what he actually says just what his characters say. In that way he tricks us because of the the millions of people who have studied him and his work, we will never truly know what he looks like nor who he truly was.

Just to make things more visually pleasing, here is a more diagramed version of what I have been trying to say, whether I have succeeded remains to be seen.

1. Trickster
1. Raven
1. stole the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and Water to give to humans
2. Shakespeare
1. stole/borrowed ideas, words, mannerisms, and etc... from members of the School of Night that helped make his works as great as they are
2. His trickery is also evident in how he never allows the reader to truly know what he thinks as a person. He only allows us to know what his characters think or feel and that changes with every single one of his pieces of literature.
2. Ability to Change
1. Raven
1. Was able to change his physcial shape to be able to steal the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
2. Shakespeare
1. As we have no true idea of his identity Shakespeare is able to change within our minds and be fluid entity of what each of us individually feels that the great icon of literature should be.
3. Morals
1. Both of these two tricksters gave others morals that had a great impact on humans for the rest of the human existence (as I am guessing that Shakespeare will be taught in schools for forever)
4. Both have been mythologized
1. Shakespeare's work obviously has mythological influences but we as readers have mythologized his work and made him a god of literature as well. This blog for example has pointed out the similarities of Shakespeare and mythologized him into a Trickster god. I am guessing that Shakespeare has been mythologized with almost every type of god that societies have created.

One other aspect that has been talked about in class is that everything somehow relates to another thing. I think that this is inevitable given human nature and that all literature or art is somehow drawn from the same well so to speak. All literature has been influenced by some other piece of literature which in turn was influenced by something else and so on and so on until everything is connected. I also believe that if a person looks hard enough they will always be able to find a connection between two things even if it is just to find the connection of how they are different. One must know what something is not to know what it is.