Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Similarities between Genesis and "Prometheus Bound"

  I'm going to write about similarities between Genesis and "Prometheus Bound".  We can find some similarities in both stories even though they are based on different philosophies.
  First of all, both stories have absolute existences. It is God in Genesis, and it is Zeus in "Prometheus Bound".  They have a strong power which others can't rebel against at all.  Also, both seem to think that they don't want to share their knowledge, technology with people, and gave punishment to serpent, and Prometheus.  Actually there is a difference here.  I guess the reason of the punishment Zeus gave is because he was afraid that people got power to assert against Gods including him; however, God in the Bible just got angry against breaking a rule.  Although reasons seem different, both situations are quite similar.
  Secondly, both stories have victims of unreasonable punishment, and both victims tried to help people.  In Genesis, serpent got punishment because he encouraged Eve to eat the fruit.  I can say it's little bit controversial because serpent might just try to confuse people and tempt Eve.  In this theory, God put the tree because he respected people's will or loyalty.  So I can't say if the serpent was really good or not.  Meanwhile, Prometheus was definitely a victim.  He helped people to gain vital knowledge and skills. He thought it was absolutely necessary for people, but Zeus didn't like it.  Although I can't say both victims are completely same, they got punishment which most people might think was unreasonably terrible.

1 comment:

  1. Well, Chieu, you correctly identified the central similarities between the two stories! I'd like to correct one sentence from:

    "First of all, both stories have absolute existences" to:

    "First of all, both stories have deities who function as absolute monarchs"--or something like that.

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