How did creating your own origin myth help you better understand why cultures use stories to explain the origins of people, places, traditions, or natural events? In your response, describe the choices you made while developing your myth and explain the lesson, value, or human responsibility you wanted your story to communicate.

Prompt Response: Creating my own origin myth story helped me understand that people use fantastical and creative ways of describing the creation of natural features and animals to make them easier to understand as opposed to understanding the more complex geological and biological processes that created the world we have today. It's also a lot more entertaining. When I was writing my origin myth, I liked the idea of creating a character that represented the sun, or another god-like being who is ultimately responsible for the general creation of Earth. Another common character trope seen in these myths is a person representing the first humans, and one or more animal characters, both of which I included in my origin myth. I wanted my story to communicate the power of love and friendship, so I had my main characters get involved in a large conflict, and then realize that conflict didn't help them at all, with the characters finally deciding to collaborate and rebuild the broken world into a better place.

Summary: During the class period today, we discussed how to analyze, as well as how to write an origin myth with all of the components that it should have. We also began to plan and write origin myths of our own.

Reflection: I learned today that origin myths are helpful tools that people not only use to explain the existence of Earth and people, but also as a tool to effectively teach proper life lessons and to communicate many other ideas.