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Impact of urban legends
Mythology and its influence on modern literature
Mythology and its influence on modern literature
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Bloody Mary
Part One: Collection of the Story
The story of “Bloody Mary” was told to me by a twenty year old male. He is a current student at a University, studying accountancy. He has very conservative beliefs regarding politics. His father is an insurance broker and his mother stays at home. This story was collected on March 18, 2006, at his residence. This is the story as he told it to me:
I originally heard this from my brother when I was like ten years old. I also saw it in the movie Urban Legends. But I’ll tell you the version my brother told me. You have to go into a bathroom in your house. You turn off all of the lights and stand facing away from the mirror. You then spin around thirteen times and say ‘Bloody Mary’ thirteen times. After you finish spinning you turn around and you will see Bloody Mary looking back at you through the mirror. My brother and his friends made me do it one day at my house and nothing happened to me.
The teller showed no unusual emotion while retelling this story to me. He was positive that it was not true. He told the story in a mocking tone; he sometimes finished his sentences with laughter or a smile.
Part Two: Compare Versions of the Story
The story of Bloody Mary is a very extensive urban legend. Bloody Mary is one of many names that can be chanted to summon this ghost. Snopes.com lists that “Bloody Mary, Bloody Bones, Hell Mary, Mary Worth, Mary Worthington, Mary Whales, Mary Johnson, Mary Lou, Mary Jane, Sally, Kathy, Agnes, Black Agnes, Aggie, Svarte Madame” are all names that have been used in the retelling of this story. With an increased number of retellings comes an increase in the variation between individual stories. The version of the story told to me did not include Bloody Mary punishing the one that summoned her. Versions in which the summoner is punished describe a wide variety of fates.. Snopes.com lists that Bloody Mary “May strike her summoner dead, drive her mad, or fiercely scratch her face. She may merely peer malevolently out through the mirror, or she may drag one of the girls back through it to live with her.” This legend has several other deviations; such as the number of times you have to say the name of the spirit, and the room in which you perform the ritual.
The storyteller had not witnessed the strange happenings at the school but claimed to know someone who had seen the disturbances. As a performance, the telling of this story was very matter a fact and my friend did not self-aggrandize; the performance was quick, to the point, but not particularly dramatic. The storyteller told the legend as fact and was not melodramatic about her role as storyteller.
She was dubbed ‘Typhoid Mary’, a name she loathed, by various newspapers. “Typhoid Mary” is even defined in the dictionary as “a carrier or transmitter of anything undesirable, harmful, or catastrophic.” To make things worse, Mary was even told that she would never be allowed to cook again. She was not even allowed to prepare a glass of water for a guest that stopped by her house, for fear that she might spread Typhoid to another innocent bystander. The world took her passion away because they were afraid of her.
This story was recounted to me by a 20 year old female student at my University. She is a Communications major, coming from an upper middle class family in the rural suburbs of New Jersey. I interviewed her in her apartment sometime in the late afternoon in an informal setting. Although she is skeptical about things such as urban legends and ghost tales, she explained to me that this story always unsettled her in an inexplicable way.
To sum up, the narrator is sane in the Tell-Tale Heart. He knows what he’s doing was wrong. one could only imagine that he is insane. this seems plausible at first, but after analyzing all the data you can clearly see he is sane. You always see how when someone does something evil like this that they have a mental disorder because something must be wrong with the narrator to do something this cruel to another
Because of these factors I can make the assumption that Mary is actually bi-racial and the child of Mrs.Bellmont and a past black slave. It is shown in the book’s glossary that such things, as expected, were taboo and looked down upon. Many mothers would never tell just who the father of their bi-racial child was. “Wilson underscores the politics of skin color under which enslaved and legitimate children in the same family resembled each other, while white women would rather not have the family resemblance spoken of.”
Mystery is a literary genre that hooks the reader in with thrill and suspense. Mary Reilly is a 1990 parallel novel by American writer Valerie Martin inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson 's classic novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Faithfully weaving in details from Robert Louis Stevenson 's classic, Martin introduces an original and captivating character: Mary Reilly, a survivor who is scarred but still strong, familiar with evil but brimming with devotion and love. The novel Mary Reilly both compliments and complements Stevenson’s novel.
Close to where Mary lived there was a man named Vultair was experimenting putting electricity through Frogs to see if they could come back to life. With that going on close to her as well as the fear of a revolution and the pressure on her to think of a ghost story it is not surprising she thought of a horror story that would still be popular in the 21st Century.
In ‘unreliable narration’ the narrator’s account is at odds with the implied reader's surmises about the story’s real intentions. The story und...
12 Nov 2013. <http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/queenmary.ht,>. "Ghost Myth: Bloody Mary." seeksghosts.blogspot. N.p., 08 Jun 2011.
“The only Mary story we talked about was the wedding story-the time she persuaded her son, practically against his will, to manufacture wine in the kitchen out of plain water.”
Tradition of the Community: Starting in the Middle Ages, there were the first written accounts of visions of the Virgin Mary, but as the time moved into the Reformation Age, the visions of Mary became more and more frequent. People claimed she appeared them and acted as an instrument of God, telling them to spread the faith and build churches. The most well-known vision that took place during the Reformation when Mary appeared to Juan Diego of Guadalupe, Mexico in 1531.There were many reported miracles in the town that seemed to point to a divine being helping, for example, the roses in the middle of winter, an uncle miraculously cured of a deadly illness, and the image of the Virgin Mary on Juan’s tunic. This vision led to the spread of Christianity to the western hemisphere, and the fact that Mary was speaking Juan’s native language seemed to bring about the belief that Mary is truly the Mother of all Christians and the mediator of the word of God to common people. The vision of Mary at Guadalupe is just one of many that happened during the Reformation, and led to many shrines being built to honor the areas where Mary was believed to have appeared to the people. Each shrine had some symbolic meaning to honor Mary in specific ways. For example, in Guadalupe, the shrine to Mary included the Mexican flag to represent her reach to the Mexican culture, a purple background to represent Mary’s queenly figure, and a pink tunic to represent the sense of joy she fills the people who come into her presence with. With many people claiming to have seen the Virgin Mary, masses began to participate in the tradition of praying directly to Mary in addition to attending church. This allowed people to be able to connect in a stronger way with ...
Mary Warren started out in a manner reminiscent to that of Peter Pettigrew from the famous “Harry Potter,” series; she was a timid follower of a popular group, and admired the bravery and kindness she lacked. After Mary and her so-called ‘friends’ are found dancing naked around a fire in their conservative town, they know they will likely be accused of a crime that could punish them with death; witchcraft. Mary’s friend Abigail, tells the girls to stick to their story that they were dancing in the woods and threatens to kill the girls if they reveal the truth; that Abigail was practicing witchcraft and drank blood in order to take the life of the wife of a man she had had an affair with; Elizabeth Proctor, the boss and friend of Mary Warren.
There are many people in this world, with psychological complications or disorders. From bipolar, depression, anxiety, ADHD, and many others. All those mentally disadvantages can alter ones abilities to control whether what they’re seeing is real, compared to what really happened. But millions of people live with these disadvantages daily. And if one was to ask them if they thought their mental illness affect whether if they are reliable. I believe, they wouldn't respond too kindly. Comparing real people and their situations, to how people commented on this narrator for not being reliable due to his psychological state. Makes one to believe there is no reason not to believe the event took place exactly as it was narrated to
Mary’s mother, Betty, was a poor example of what a mother should be. A prostitute by profession often abandoned Mary to perform sex acts. Unfortunately, Mary was not always abandoned and was brought into the sex acts, abused sexually, and used as a prop for Betty’s customers. Mary reported that she was forced to perform sex acts starting at the age of five at the bequest of her mother. Mary’ mother was physically abusive to her, reportedly choking her and attempting to kill her on multiple occasions. Even as a baby, Mary was not nurtured by Betty, treating her as an object rather than a child. Actually, Betty attempted to give Mary up for adoption, which was thwarted by Betty’s sister.
Near the middle of the story we see Mary exhibit her bad sinister character; her personality and feelings suddenly change when she murders her own husband by hitting him at the back of the head with a frozen lamb leg. After denying all of Mary’s helpful deeds, Patrick told her to sit down so that he can tell her something serious; the story doesn’t tell us what he says to her but Mary suddenly changes after he tells her something, her “instinct was not to believe any of it” (Dahl 2). She just responded with “I’ll get the supper” (Dahl 2) and felt nothing of her body except for nausea and a desire to vomit. She went down the cellar, opened the freezer, grabbed a frozen leg of lamb, went back upstairs, came behind Patrick, and swung the big leg of lamb as hard as she could to the back of his head killing him. This act of sudden violence shows how much she has gone ...