Reading Notes: Monsters, Horses, and Dragons

For this week's extra credit, I watched the videos from the  Crash Course Myth: Monsters, Horses, and Dragons unit. I learned about many stories of horses, serpents, wendigos, and dragons. I was most intrigued by the stories about dragons. I felt that with every new story about dragons, the more I was interested in dragons. The stories just kept getting me excited each time. The story that stood out to me most was about the creation of dragons and humans from the Serpents and Dragons video.

We do not get much description about each of the character's personalities, but the plot is what I found interesting. In this story, the world was divided in five separate parts with each part being ruled by a certain species. The monkeys were in control of the central region of the world and each other ruler of the other portions of the world made a trek to the monkey. This resulted in the monkey being impregnated, and the monkey gave birth to numerous eggs. The other rulers of the other parts of the world came back and stole the monkey's eggs besides the biggest egg. This egg hatched and produced a serpent. The serpent was in charge of retrieving the other eggs, and on that journey, grew into a dragon. The last two eggs that hatched were humans, and this is how our species came to be in this creation story.

I like how the creation of two separate species was intertwined to create this tale. This is an approach to this story that I would have not taken. This is a creative way to explain not just the birth of humans, but the way our world came to be through time. I have been interested in creation stories, and I have been able to learn more about how they are composed through the telling of this story.

Bibliography

Serpents and Dragons by Crash Course World Mythology

Image information: Snake guarding eggs, Wikimedia Commons