{"id":7164,"date":"2026-11-11T11:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T18:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=7164"},"modified":"2026-11-10T11:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T18:36:11","slug":"ancient-understanding-of-the-monster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2026\/11\/ancient-understanding-of-the-monster\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Understanding of the Monster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I wrote The Parable of Miriam the Camel Driver<\/em> 20 years ago, I wrote it in the style of a fairy tale. I called it a parable to indicate it was something different–a heroic journey with obstacles and an imperative goal to accomplish.  Fairy tales gave us a well-known world with dangers around the bend.  The treacherous stepmother leads the child heroes into the woods, and they have to find a way to safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cWhat do we do now?\u201d recurs though the story.  It\u2019s life or death in a familiar setting. Stay out of the witch\u2019s oven!  Stay on the path and recognize the wolf\u2019s big teeth when you see them. There is no time to make it complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve loved the fairy tales since I was a child, reading the blue, red, green fairy tales and as many of their cousins as I could find. I devoured them and looked for more. Homer\u2019s Odyssey<\/em> felt that way and so did Tolkien\u2019s Lord of the Rings. I assumed that these tales from oral tradition had this common style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I went deeper into the library stacks, I found books that went deeper into how people thought. Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations<\/em>  and gave us Miss Havisham. She was full of the past that rippled into her future actions and plans. The modernist authors James Joyce (Ullysses<\/em> is a call-back to the Odyssey) and Woolfe\u2019s To the Lighthouse<\/em> accordioned out the many many many thoughts a person could have in a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Henry James, whose writing makes an infinity of a conversational pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I assumed this was something new– not in only in writing and literary  style\u2014but evidence  of a change in people. Humans were increasing  complexity in consciousness. Humans had expanded their capability for sophisticated thinking.

So when Woolfe take a whole novel to tell the story of a day, readers are invited to pay attention to the shades of interpretation and nuance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was gifted Beowulf<\/em>\u2014Tolkein\u2019s translation\u2014and picked it up again to live in the immediate world of fairy tale again. Tolkien  is a linguist and scholar, and he translated Beowulf in 1926. He was never satisfied with his translation so I wasn\u2019t published until long after his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This translation shows how much was happening in the story. Not psychological like Henry James, but the story of a line of people. How the fathers and grandfathers built the hall and fought together. The history of what came before and a foreshadow of the monster that is about to attack. Then the slow build up to how the monster is slain, but the danger remains for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Old English comes to me from the foggy past. But this translation shows me how the peoples of that time considered their lives and their actions. This is not a simple fairy tale. I\u2019d only read the story in a flattened translation. I\u2019m changing my mind now. I think the people of the past understood more than I was giving them credit.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The immediate action of fairy tales matches my life. Go go go– make a choice take the action\u2014are still true. But knowing the story of why and how I got here adds a richness and satisfaction to the next steps I choose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Story pulls me forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I wrote The Parable of Miriam the Camel Driver 20 years ago, I wrote it in the style of a fairy tale. I called it a parable to indicate it was something different–a heroic journey with obstacles and an … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7165,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions\/7165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}