As the pressure intensified and the deadline came fast approaching, rereading the Popol Vuh cleared things up significantly. Reviewing the story for my essay, I found myself lost in the winding turns of the story and its strictly NOT consecutive order, though it gave me no problem. Somehow, reading the story again allowed me to see a lot of the things that I hadn't seen before. Certain things that had been discussed in class and not. For example, when the hero twins travel to Xibalba to face the gods, they aren't fooled. Of course, they ARE the hero twins and are divine and sacred, but what astounded me was not that the boys triumphed over the gods, but the reaction of the gods. As a whole, the gods played tricks and tested the boys, purposely trying to make them fail. With failure, the twins would be sacrificed just as their father(s) had been. Not only did the boys pass every test and slip by every trick, they did it with help from the animals around, such as the Mosquito helping them with the names of the gods. Most surprising was when the gods seemed disappointed in the boys; that now there are these beings that will be able to properly worship them the way they prefer but they don't want it. They wanted the boys to fail so they could be sacrificed, which I found very odd. In this way, the boys seemed to turn the tables on the gods and were able to defeat them, leaving the gods overcome. This gave me a good sense of perseverance and concentration and being willing to take help from others in order to overcome arrogance, and it makes perfect sense.
In general, my favorite part of the Popul Vuh was instantly when the maiden, Xquic, tricks the gods and her father by making her heart out of the red tree sap and pretending to be sacrificed for her wrongly accused illegitimacy. I felt it empowering that she was able to trick the gods so keenly, and in a way this also shows how the gods can be overcome. The best aspect of this concept is when viewing the gods as a whole, they are seen as fallible and it provides that sense of imperfection. The story portrays the message that no one is perfect and that makes for a capturing story.
I really liked the part with Xquic too. She was one of my favorite characters, though I was a bit disappointed when she faded out of the story after a while. I felt that she was a good representation of a strong woman.
ReplyDeleteI definitely wanted her to be there longer instead of being lost too. I really liked that she was the strong woman that wasn't afraid to fight for herself and to go against the gods when they were being wrong. It was inspiring in a way, and just really interesting to see how the story was created that way.
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