Chauncey Allison
Interpretation Essay
Period 2 Mythology
19 September 2008
Demeter and Persephone
Analyzing myths can be broken down into three separate levels of interpretation: natural, social and psychological. While analyzing different stories and myths you can dive deeper into each individual character and each turning point in the plot. The natural level (Macro) is the big picture; this is when someone takes a step back and looks at the story as a whole and how it relates to the physical world. On the social level (meso) myths are analyzed as they would relate to your community. Take a story and relate it to one of your everyday attributes, this is analyzing on the social level. Out of the three levels of interpretation the one level that truly digs into your head and really gets your brain thinking is the physchological (micro). With these different levels, it should be easy to decipher any myth. Right?
Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, was the maiden of the spring. She brought beauty to the world whenever spring came around. After all of the death and sadness of the winter season, Persephone would walk along the earth and let her beauty take over the roots of the plants that once lived. Persephone then went missing, and Demeter being the Goddess of the Earth, held her gifts from the people of the earth because she was so sad and alone. Demeter left in search of her daughter, not knowing that she was in the depths of the underworld, kidnapped by Hades, Lord of the Underworld and God of Wealth. Now Hades, having all his wealth and power, used his skills in temptation and convinced Persephone to eat his pomegranate seeds, and this set in stone the fact that Persephone would have to come back to the underworld for four months out of every year, these months are the sad and chilling winter months when nothing grows or lives. This myth has so much to do with the seasons and why things happen in the environment the way they do, but there is so much more that we can dive into.
As a community this myth greatly effects how a society and how people of that society work as a whole. Demeter represents the simple fact that in early years man had to learn how to ration during the winter months because no more food would grow. Hades would take away the beauty that was on the earth (Persephone) for a certain number of months, and in these months it would be obvious that sadness would take over a community, and this can be represented by Demeter’s sadness.
The most interesting level of interpretation is the psychological level or the micro level. In this level of analyzing myths we get to reach deeper into the depths of any myth and into the minds of the person reading. So in a sense this could be the easiest because being the person that read the myths you can just simply open your self up to be analyzed.
Sin, hatred, kidnap, sadness, love, wealth, temptation and just a dark man that’s lonely are what make this myth so interesting when analyzing on a micro level. When Hades kidnaps Persephone it is so much more then a simple kidnapping, it truly gives the reader the heart- broken feeling of being taken away from a loving mother and a safe home. While Persephone is in the underworld she experiences many different forms of temptation: wealth, greed, and even possible love. Hades in this myth represents the loss of purity and the greed of wealth and love. When he feeds Persephone the pomegranate seeds this is a symbol of anything that is tempting in our lives, it represents sin and how even the simplest things like eating that pomegranate seed, may have consequences.
Taking any story and slicing it into three different levels of interpretation (macro, meso, and micro), not only makes the myth more interesting but it sincerely makes it easier to understand. I have learned when analyzing this myth, that there is so much more the just the cover of the story, and there is so much more then just the settings, characters, and the plot line. There is always a deeper meaning and more of a lesson to learn.
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