Comparison Paper for "Mythology and Modern Life", last assignment.

Not really my greatest, I was stressed and preoccupied with distractions. Something expelled quickly to meet the requirements of the course. Grade and teachers comments at the end. 

 

“The trickster myth derives creative intelligence from appetite. It begins with a being whose main concern is getting fed and it ends with the same being grown mentally swift, adept at creating and unmasking deceit, proficient at hiding his tracks and at seeing through the devices used by others to hide theirs. Trickster starts out hungry, but before long he is master of the kind of creative deception that, according to a long tradition, is a prerequisite of art”. (pg 17)

Gloria has learned from an early age that she is a very attractive woman and that she can use this to her great advantage. She uses her beauty and men’s appetites for her for her own ambitions. When she uses a man for all that she can she leaves him for another. The parasite leaves the host for another.

One of the many instances of tricksterism is when she originally rejects Liggett’s $250, to make her seem more than a prostitute. She is after much more than two hundred and fifty dollars and is insulted when she is given what she thinks is such a paltry amount. She is used to getting so much more than that. She demands much more than that. The trickster is greedy in her appetite, making sure that there is always another avenue to the satisfaction of her appetite while she thoroughly uses up the one that she is already on.

Later when Liggett tells her that she should ask for a higher price, she stabs his foot with her stiletto heel, she is insulted, she is beyond a mere “prostitute”. She cannot get what she truly wants, a man to support her fully and make her a complete woman in the lifestyle that wants. It even appears that she has been supported by men, as she doesn’t seem to ever have had a job, yet lives in the building from the movie’s title, what seems to be an expensive apartment in Manhattan. The trickster must reflect the prey that they are after.

            Another instance of tricksterism is when Gloria is able to manipulate Steve to call his girlfriend Norma against his wishes to let Gloria borrow a dress. Norma arrives with the dress for Gloria, letting Gloria borrow it against her own wishes. When Gloria leaves Norma gives Steve an ultimatum, either her or me. Later Gloria slips through this trap by confiding in Steve about how she had been raped when her mother left her alone when Gloria was young. The trickster learns from their lessons and strives to never find themselves in a position of weakness again.

            Gloria is the trickster who is being ridden by her appetites than the trickster who rides her appetites. I believe that before meeting Liggett she was in control of her appetites but after the introduction of Liggett’s love, she lost control. She was made weak by her own feelings of love, which I think she had never felt with another man. After finding and then falling out of love with Liggett, she becomes irrational and accidentally kills herself. I think she had become entrapped by her own feelings, disabling her and her ability to remain aloof from her appetites. She became emotional and confused after leaving Happy’s and drove herself to her death. Before finding love with Liggett, women like Norma and Happy would never have affected her. After falling in love with Liggett, she becomes like them, attached to their men, and their need for their men. But a woman like Gloria could never become a Norma or a Happy, and so she had to die. In mythology and indigenous cultures, boys and girls go through a symbolic death through an initiation rite to bring them into their full adulthood. Gloria the trickster never crossed that threshold of initiation; she is just a continuation of her appetites.

            When we are introduced to Gloria, she is at the top of her game in New York City, the city of all cities. She has conquered man after powerful man until she comes upon Liggett, another man at the top of his life, successful and wealthy, able to give her the life of her dreams. The trickster knows quality when she finds it.

            Gloria is definitely in need of a mentor and has been in need of one for a very long time. She has arrived at the point of her life because she never had a role model from what the movie implies. In the movie she appears to be an only child, vulnerable, and becomes victimized in her youth when her mother leaves her. Gloria has probably felt abandoned by her mother ever since, and now only sees men as weak, easily manipulateable through their sexual drive, something from which she can obtain something by trading her body. The trickster finds the best bait for their prey, even if it means that the trickster must make herself the hook that catches the bait.

            Liggett is a hero type who has been going through the motions in his life and his marriage until he meets Gloria. When he first meets her she is nothing more than just another one night stand but as he gets to know her he falls in love. When he finds out about her promiscuous lifestyle he feels at first betrayed and is compelled to punish her for this betrayal. He later forgives her after he realizes that she had been just as unhappy in her existence as he had been, she just filled her own voids differently.

            Liggett is one of the lucky ones in the story in that he has a mentor and friend in Bingham Smith. This helps him a great deal having someone to give him advice and steer him in the right direction, to influence him for good rather than letting Liggett continue on in his self-destructive ways.

            Steve is another hero type in that he keeps trying to be supportive of Gloria as she lives her self-destructive lifestyle. He serves as Gloria’s mentor as well as her friend. He tries to remain supportive of her even though their relationship becomes a strain on his relationship with his girlfriend Norma, and begins to take a toll on him emotionally as well. He knows that he is one of the few people in her life that she can rely on, and that if he abandons her like all the other men in her life, that it would take a harsh and damaging toll on her.

            Emily is a heroine in that she must surely know that Liggett is unhappy and has been for some time, and like women in strained relationships know that Liggett is probably getting her needs met somewhere else. She defends her husband to her mother because she knows what life is sometimes like, and she understands the strain he is under always trying to satisfy her and her family.

All of these characters are sacrificing themselves in their support of Gloria, and the things that move within her to give her the life that she feels she deserves. These characters enable and sustain her as she floats from one whim to another. Perhaps it is their secret envy that they sustain her to live vicariously through her, perhaps they sustain thinking that in some form they are responsible for the power that she wields. Perhaps they are caught in that power. They sacrifice themselves by letting her do as she pleases, by not trying to stop her, by not telling her what she can and cannot do. Instead they follow Gloria as she makes her way in the world.

Liggett cannot find his bliss in the world as he is not a fully formed person, he lives unwittingly through the boy archetype, one that he has grown tired of for some time but has been unable to shed. He has learned like many people have how to appear outwardly successful by marrying into money. At first he probably enjoyed this new lifestyle, this outward appearance of wealth to others which heightened his self-esteem, and the lavish, comfortable life that came with it. Over the years though, he probably no longer found any joy in it as it was a lie he was living, he didn’t really love his wife, and her family was just another chore for him. He was going through the motions in his home and professional life, while pursuing intoxicants and women to fill the voids in himself. But after enough time of this second lifestyle and it became as empty as his other life. I believe when he met Gloria, she gave him hope, gave him the escape from his life that he was always searching for. He would have followed her to wherever she wanted to go. I think he was planning on doing this when he decided to stop working for his wife’s family chemical business and went to work for his friend Bingham Smith. He was trading one job for another to create the foundation for his new relationship with Gloria as he began to distance himself from his relationship with his wife.

Liggett and Gloria cannot find their bliss as they are still children at the fundamental levels of themselves. They both feel the unhappiness of living their duplicitous lifestyles and make flagellating attempts to change but they cannot enter into their adult roles. They have lived too long in their lives made comfortable by others and have a great deal of anxiety from the idea of having to change. They want another life but cannot give up the pleasures that they find in their extant lifestyle. They exist at a crossroads and fear the threshold they must cross. When Liggett says he must “find his pride” is a reflection of the boy archetype in himself, that he had been living a fake life, and must now go off to make his own life on his own terms, without the limitations that he has placed on himself from trying to please others, by living their example which is not his own.

Gloria cannot find her bliss because she is too entrenched in her lifestyle of hedonism. She has lived this life for a very long time and is used to it, she is set in its ways. The trickster learns to master and amass various tricks to suit their life inside a particular situation. The trickster hopes that the situation remains static. If the situation changes then the trickster is at the mercy of change, now having to discard old, reliable tricks for new and awkward gambles.

The myth of the city is significant in this story. When we meet Gloria she is at the top of her game in the city of New York, NY, what a lot of people consider to be the greatest city of the world, and the capital of the planet as all nations are represented here. Gloria lives in one of the most exclusive apartment buildings in the richest part of the city, the economical heart of the world, Manhattan. She moves within this world victoriously, using the richest and powerful men in the country to satisfy her own whims. Gloria at the end of the movie has conquered all of the most powerful men in the city, falls in and out of love, and has to move on. Boston is the next largest city in the area. It is the next logical, calculated step to take. It is another city with a wealth of history and is a major city in the United States. It is the second famous city on the East Coast. It would feed her appetites for some time as she began just another life.

Works Cited:

Butterfield 8. Mann, David. Berman, Pedro S. 1960. Taylor, Elizabeth.

Cousineau, Phil. Once and Future Myths. Conari Press. 2001.

Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World. North Point Press. 1998

McLellan, Hilary. “Hero's Journey Basics”. 2003

 

92% (92 pts)
 While I loved some of your insights, there was a sloppiness about how the paper was thrown together that detracted from your grade. The paper lacked a title, and an introductory setup telling the readers where we might expect to go. And I do not think Gloria lived in an apt in the center of Manhattan. She just woke up there, and then went to visit her friend. She lived with her mother in a boro somewhere, I believe. But you did well spotting incidents of bliss, tricksterism, heroism, and mentoring, woven throughout the movie, including the myth of the city, demonstrating that you grasped the fundamental concepts of the course. Thanks so much.