Differences Of Mermaid Myths From Cultural Beliefs English Literature Essay

Differences Of Mermaid Myths From Cultural Beliefs English Literature EssayMyth is handed-down ancient stories which have actually occurred in a previous age, explaining cosmological and supernatural traditional of a people, their gods, heroes, cultural traits and religions beliefs (Leach 1975 778). This essay will comp ar kin amidst mermaid myths from different cultural beliefs and its symbols which render the inner meaning of each myth.It is certainly true to say that the idea of mermaids when outgrowth arrived into peoples mind is a mythology aquatic creature with female human beings torso instead of legs, mermaids have tail of a fish. They have beautiful crystal clear voice, which seduced men to fall into the head game when they are singing. In other word, it could be understood that Mermaid themselves portrait the beautiful seduction of the female sex. Nobody could possibly stand the pleasing voice if some(prenominal) of them procure close to the mermaid. This signi ficant also has been taken as a theme, intension, slogan or the meaning of some certain yarns and advertising products. Though, there are some questions about the mermaid myth that have been wondered by mythological researcher. (Doty 2004 11)They have a broad presentation in different myths and folklores depending on those cultural beliefs. The air of mermaids can be differenti haved up to the imagination and the message they want to send. As great as they maintain the female figure with dramatically long hair, it is a copy right of mermaids characteristics. Significance and meaning are in the main different as well according to a particular cultural mythology. Initially, the word Mermaid means sea woman. Mere is an old English means sea and maid from maiden, means woman. Males equivalent is Merman, where it could be recognized clearly the use of look word man after mere, Mythological research. (Doty 2004 11) Unfortunately, the ideology of this aquatic myth is focused on the e qualation of womans enchantment and seduction due to the emphasis of appearance. Merman patently does not play a big role in those issues. Besides, there is another(prenominal) dark story of mermaids attitude, where they would portray foxy planners. They are depicted to be squeezing life out of mostly sailor, while attempting to escape from sea storms. In some myths, mermaids also carry piece down to their underwater kingdom. These both ideas are more terrified than the first mermaid tale, but still emphasize on seduction. It is normal in term of classical myth to depict women as negative or passive models, said Marta Weigle in Myth and Mythmaking in Fantastic Literature by Women. (Shinn 1986 19) If women in mythology described as negative example, therefore Why is a mermaid not portraying as a creature with more masculinity? Since a holy spirit of aqua is a Goddess in Thai Pra-mae-kong-ka or waters spirit in classic mythology not including the famous Poseidon. Anything associat ed with water should be translated to the meaning of softness. Women do not have manly body constructed as men. They would not be able to intensively fight as the way male heroes did. Therefore, they have to use the ability of enchanting nearby men who lured by their stunning bodies and medical specialty.Greek mythology explains the characteristics of mermaid in similarity. Greek addressed the name of Sirens. Three dangerous bird-women lived in mysterious rocky coast, where they lure nearby sailors to enchanting by their fine music. Sirens portray as seductresses as same as the description of women in mythology. Women were sources of sin (Shinn 1986 110). Sirens some metres portrayed in by and by folklore as fully aquatic and mermaid-like. They still sustain the figure of female who is the best in seducing human in every myth.witcombe.sbc.edu/water/artmermaids.htmlthere is another mermaid myth in Japanese beliefs. According to old Japanese tale, Mermaids organs could ingest the miracle affection to people who desired in particular supernatural power. Anyone who ate flesh of a mermaid would achieve the immortality and vice versa A mermaids heart would turn back to mortal human. This mermaid myth is quite extra-ordinary to the ideology of Western mermaid. The ability of gaining immortality would turn the dark side of human to hunt mermaid selfishly, as human is afraid of aged and death. However, there is a drawback to remind a sin of going against the nature. A person, who became an immortal, would live in the world alone for eternity. He or she could only watch their beloved people died as time passed by while he or she was the only one who survived for decades. That is the agonic pain human could feel without physical wound. (Doty 2004 15)Such myths that are embedded into the different cultures are the result of the fears of water. Regarding to Geoffrey Galt Harpham, the author of On The Grotesque Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature, The gr otesque is the concept without form the world nearly always modifies such indeterminate noun as monster, objects or things (Harpham 1982 3). A byproduct of fear as a mermaid may be makes the figure of the mermaid a monstrous, an abject a grotesque. Feared and unbearable, human invent a figure that represent their different suppressed fear fear of oceans, fear of travelling or perhaps fear of women. Human in the presence of the fearful figure get what is called the temptation. Temptations are not grotesque not because they are hideous dragons and gorgons terrible beasts are not necessarily grotesque but because in the midst of an overwhelming impression of monstrousness there is much we can recognize, mush corrupted and shuffled similarities, (Harpham 1982 5). Due to these temptations, the abject, the grotesque human fear and cannot bear is in fact rather something familiar. The idea results in a cross over between human and non-human. To mermaids, theyre fish crossing over with hu man the familiar with the abject. Even though Mermaids myth is broadly presented according to culture and belief, there are basic understandings of mermaid maintained. Mermaid could not be a mermaid if there is no seductive characteristic in any sense. The tale of different world be line ups very well known narrative by media and the adaptation such as The Little Mermaid of Waltz Disney Picture. In the adaptation, the mermaid figure Ariel plays the jockstrap who longs to explore the land above and eventually falls in love with the human prince Phillips while recuing him from a shipwreck. Difference leads to the struggling situation, and audiences love to consume the encroach within a plot. As the crossing over gets narrowed down into something forbidden, the mermaid figure in the narrative seeks to become human. She is then seen as a human being the protagonist and has humanly feelings. From the frightening image of a sea monster grotesque, the mermaid myth gets varied by the new identity as a protagonist who is portrayed as a young curious and delightful girl who can fall in love with the most forbidden sort out racial difference. Therefore, the forbidden love issue between human and mermaid appears to be the most famous genre.Within the Thai culture, according to Jit Phumisak, there are few stories about mermaids comparing to the western although, mermaids have appeared in some Thai literatures. Most people might imagine that mermaid has half(prenominal) and half body between human and fish but in the very first Thai literature mermaid appeared as a serpent in Li-lit-ong-karn-chang-nam ()- --(He, Pra-insuan rode on the white terrify and use mermaid as a weapon)-- (With a power of mermaid he could destroy anything)Pra-insuan uses the holy white cow as his transportation and use a glide as his weapon but in this poem the writer didnt use the word snake but he used mermaid or nguak Which means that snake and mermaid referring to the same thing. This mermaids appearances are nearly like mermaids archetypes in general although differentiate to fit the Thai literature world.The myth of mermaids is also used through a symbol by using its appearance and its characteristics. The symbolism of a mermaid that is widely known is the Starbucks Coffee logo having a twin-tailed siren in the middle ring by the green circle labeled the company name. Siren is a name calling for a creature having a half-fish, half-woman body in Greek mythology. According to the myth, sirens actually take forms of a bird or a fish but soon after, the myth stated as the siren was a fish-woman. The origin of the twin tails is a combination of a fish tail and a womans legs. Usually Sirens are hunting around rocks or cliffs. Additionally, they are believed to be daughters of the river Achelous and the nymph Calliope and usually they live in mountains. Basically, a symbolic figure of siren can have diverse meanings such as an inferior of women, a impure imagination attracted towards the beginning or the end of life, or a suffering of a yearning leading to death meaning though they have a beautiful face and breast, they could not satisfy the craving occurred by their music and charm because of their atypical bodies. But essentially they give a meaning of temptations or seduction meaning the use of the charm to death. According to Juan Eduardo Cirlot, the author of The Dictionary of Symbols, The spell thus cast is attributed to the siren whose songs so captivates the listeners that he falls into the ocean (of the lower water and of nascent forms) teeming with multitudinous life. (Cirlot 2002 298) What significance of sirens is that they were given such a beautiful rhapsody which really the music has reductive and deadly sense hidden that anyone who hear the song may step into sirens places without knowing that he will be a prey of them. So this feature is what Starbucks company got the idea of the logo from the myth of sirens. The Starbucks logo was inspired from the invention of the name of the company. At first, the company name Starbucks was taken from the character who is the first crew on the ship, Pequod, from a literature named Moby Dick. According to Sara Gilbert, the author of The Story of Starbucks, The striking green, black and white logo that adorns all the Starbucks products is a salute to the companys soonest incarnation.(Gilbert 2008 13) The name, Starbucks, is an intention of the company that every costumer reminds of a fascinating scent of a deep ocean. And that intention comes to a research on the symbol to represent of it, and so they come up with a twin-tailed mermaid or so called siren which was copied from a Nordic woodcut of the sixteen century. The first usage of the twin-tailed siren was the trustworthy symbol from the woodcut which the siren was having a Rubenesque body, showing its breasts and navel and wearing a crown. Also, apart from her breasts and navel, her tail symbolizes as a more sexua l connotation openly. According to Howard Schultz, Dori Jones Yang, the author of Pour Your Heart Into It How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, That early siren, bare- breasted and Rubenesque, was supposed to be as seductive as the coffee itself .(Schultz and Yang 1997 33) The company gives the significance of the siren as a creature who devour men to death, when compared to the comprehend of the coffee that the smell was like such a sweet song a siren singing which is, due to the mythology, having a seductive music and it seduces people who hear of it to come to its place or people who smell of their coffee would come to the shop. According to Bryant Simon, the author of Everything but the coffee learning about America from Starbucks, With Schultzs approval, they drew her as a less seductive, less dangerous icon, more a sweet, mild-mannered mermaid than a sexually dangerous mermaid.(Simon 2009 42) Later on, the company changed the appearance of the siren logo by coverin g up its breasts and belly button to have less sexual connotation and it was redrawn by focusing on the sirens face into a sweetly smiley siren than a dangerously seductive previous one. Importantly, the new siren logo gives a new brighter good feeling of a siren rather than a woodcut siren. Also they changed color of the surrounding circle from brown to green which is more nature conservative and it gives a feeling of more loving along with the new siren than the preceding version and it is the one used in every branch until today.In conclusion, the mermaid myth has long been bounded to the civilizations of mankind. each(prenominal) culture around the world may have its own interpretation of the mythical sea creature, but it is notable that all share similar features of half fish half human. The figure is often seen as the representation of the females dark side, for example the seductresses of the sea that lure sailors to their end in the deep water of the oceans by their beaut iful deceiving voices. Or the scary mythical creature that holds the secret to eternal life and youthful that people are after with little knowledge of the issuing of their greed. The figure of a mermaid can be called a grotesque the non-thing that stands for anything opposing human, all that is feared and disgusted by human. However, from another point of view, the mermaid grotesque can be seen as rather familiar to human as a mermaid features half of a woman body, and in some narrative come in nexus with such personal side of the human life love. Furthermore, the figure of mermaid can not only represent aspects of darkness of the femininity but also the humans mind in general, for example, seduction, sexual desire, fears, greed, religion or even forbidden sexual perversity. Different tales were told in many different narratives about the mermaid through space, time and media means.