The Western Frontier of the Gods
Long ago, in the days of miracles, there were those gods who believed they were truly helping humanity with their divine interventions, and those who believed they harmed humanity with their interventions. A council was assembled of all major deities of the areas after the fall of Rome at their hands. Seven delegates in all from each pantheon, and of course the Jehovah with 6 of his arch-angels. From Asia to the Americas, the Nordic countries to the far southern tip of Africa, they assembled in on a neutral ground, space. People had always looked to the heavens, and thus it was a public domain to the gods, and this is where they put together the Treaty of Ba. The treaty stated that for 2000 years none of the gods would intervene, and would instead go into a deep slumber for the allotted time to see whether their intervention was in fact bad.
After the 2000 year span, they return in the year XX to find the world to be a corrupt and desolate place. The fertile fields of their home lands covered in cement housing, streets of asphalt, and mass produced breeding grounds of greed and other various sins. The gods were aghast, even those that supported intervention of the gods were unable to comprehend the corruption that had taken place in their absence. They searched for only minutes before they found the answer, a spider. A huge spider, with millions of followers, thousands of avatars ranging from personal computers to corporate mainframes, and a web that spanned the globe. The stage was set for the third world war, this one not fought with godlike weapons, but with the weapons of the gods themselves.
Wary of bringing about destruction, the gods crept to their most loyal followers, and spoke with them in seclusion. Their goal was to gather the masses and take the enemy by surprise. There was no point in destroying their followers without a fight, so silently the gods crept onto the scene, moving as the ninja.
The struggle of Jehovah
After careful deliberation, Jehovah decided to visit the Rabbi Gladstein. This man had been quietly removed from the church for his treachorous teachings that God would return to help not only the Jews, but all people.
After the Civil War, Americans abandoned the sectional emphasis caused by slavery and developed a national focus. During the period from 1865-1890, Americans completed the settlement of the West. For the farmers and ranchers, the American West was a land of opportunity because land was cheap and the Homestead Act provided land to farmers, including immigrants and blacks, in order to grow crops, raise cattle and make a profit. The American West was also seen as a land of opportunity for miners due to the gold and silver rush in the far west which they believed would make them rich. However, both groups faced many challenges and few achieved great wealth.
The Manifest Destiny was a progressive movement starting in the 1840's. John O'Sullivan, a democratic leader, named the movement in 1845. Manifest Destiny meant that westward expansion was America's destiny. The land that was added to the U.S. after 1840 (the start of Manifest Destiny) includes The Texas Annexation (1845), The Oregon Country (1846), The Mexican Cession (1848), The Gadsden Purchase (1853), Alaska (1867), and Hawaii (1898). Although this movement would take several years to accomplish fully, things started changing before we knew it. New technology took off right away!
In life, one must realize that it is impossible to be perfect and so there are always going to be things that one will regret. Modernist author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his short story, "Babylon Revisited", tells the story of a man who has made many mistakes in his life and is living with these regrets and trying desperately to bring his life back together. In the story, Fitzgerald draws heavily upon the current events of the world he is living in and uses the present to depict the past.
Kathleen DuVal, professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, contests long held beliefs about the historiography of native people and their place in America with her work, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent. DuVal’s insightful book focuses on the Arkansas River Valley and the diverse group of both native groups and European powers that contented over the physical landscape, its resources, and the perception of control and power. The premise of Native is to show that native groups such as the Quapaws, Osage, and the Cherokee had the upper hand in almost every aspect from their economy, military might, and physical presence up until the 1800s.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
The gods are always in the background, their presence is always felt. Patroclus is afraid of Thetis, not only because she is immortal but because she is Achilles mother and Patroclus is aware that Thetis does not approve of him in her sons life, “You will be dead soon enough” (pg.54). Patroclus knows he is nothing in the grand scheme of things he is no hero just in love with one that happens to be half god and that love which will eventually take him to the battle field where Apollo drops him from Troy’s walls and find his death at the end of
In his essay, “The Indians’ Old World,” Neal Salisbury examined a recent shift in the telling of Native American history in North America. Until recently, much of American history, as it pertains to Native Americans; either focused on the decimation of their societies or excluded them completely from the discussion (Salisbury 25). Salisbury also contends that American history did not simply begin with the arrival of Europeans. This event was an episode of a long path towards America’s development (Salisbury 25). In pre-colonial America, Native Americans were not primitive savages, rather a developing people that possessed extraordinary skill in agriculture, hunting, and building and exhibited elaborate cultural and religious structures.
The story of the American West is still being told today even though most of historic events of the Wild West happened over more than a century ago. In movies, novels, television, and more ways stories of the old west are still being retold, reenacted, and replayed to relive the events of the once so wild and untamed land of the west that so many now fantasize about. After reading about the old west and watching early westerns it is amazing how much Hollywood still glorifies the history and myth of the old west. It may not be directly obvious to every one, but if you look closely there is always a hint of the Western mentality such as honor, justice, romance, drama, and violence. The most interesting thing about the Old West is the fact that history and myth have a very close relationship together in telling the story of the West.
The worship of gods was not just a practice for the Ancient Greeks it was a passion and they took it very seriously. Huge temples were built across the Peloponnesus and beyond that honored their respective gods in the Greek religion. Parades, sacrifices, banquets, and week long celebrations were held in honor of these gods that the Greeks based nearly their entire society off of. The Greeks would offer their lives, their family’s lives, all of their possessions to please the gods.
number of people in the world. We should also civilize it because we need the
Prior to the establishment of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) religious justice was a muddled picture. In the polytheistic religions, gods each had their own interests, which often conflicted with the interests of other gods. “The belief in one god allowed the Abrahamic religions setup a fundamentally different dynamic in ethics; the dichotomous distinction between right and wrong.” (Stark, 2001). Human actions no longer served one god or another’s interests, they were now judged by the embodiment of all that was perfect and sacred; God.
As defined by Edgar Roberts setting is “the natural, manufactured, political, cultural, and temporal environment including everything that the characters own. Characters may be either helped or hurt by their surroundings and they nay fight about possessions or goals” (Roberts 109). In Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, this setting is the focal point. Every natural event or decision made by the characters is unique to the wild platform on which it takes place. The setting of the West, including the mindless violence within this setting and the merciless desert that it holds, shapes the story and characters therein on a magnitude so great that the characters have no control over it.
The patterns of living that the world witnesses today are greatly influenced by history. This is because of the fact that history plays an immense role in forming one’s future; the abundant interactions socially, economically, politically, result in repercussions that can hardly be unraveled. However, this does not in anyway mean that one cannot trace today’s state of affairs back to its roots. Tracing today’s occurrences back to their origin is possible due to the fact that the agents’ (nations) origins are known.
A Triumvirate is a political alliance involving three rulers, who divide the land and power among each other. The first Triumvirate involved Pompey; who was a popular general who crushed the Spanish Revolt. The second was Crassus; he was a wealthy noble with a lot of ambition and was very ruthless. Crassus owned all the fire stations in Rome, when a person needed his services he would let the fire burn until he was paid a sum of money to his likings. Crassus was unsuccessful in his military pursuits. The third was Julius Caesar; he was also a wealthy noble. He was very popular with the lower class. For a short period Caesar was the Governor of Spain, when he returned he was thrown a Triumph. All three men wanted to run for Consul, and all were denied by the Senate. They created the Triumvirate because they all had an Anti-Senate outlook, and by forming the Triumvirates they would all be able to take turns being Consul. They were Anti-Senate because the Senate had lost control over their generals and armies, and had little support from the people.
Who were the Aztecs? Why were they considered to be an empire even greater than the Romans? And how was Hernan Cortes able to defeat them? These are some of the questions that people ask about these indigenous people. These people are known as the Aztecs but originally called themselves Mexica. They came to Mexico in the early thirteenth century and from there they started to develop a social structure and government consisting of priests, kings, peasants, and soldiers. Besides having a very organized society the Aztecs had a very large and intimidating army consisting of full time soldiers and peasants. By 1427 A.D. the Aztec empire became the dominant group and controlled most of central Mexico. Considering how advanced and large the Aztec culture and society were makes me believe that they were aware of other people outside of their civilization. A clear example would be that they knew of neighboring tribes other than their own that they went to war with and conquered. Although I do believe that the Aztecs were caught off guard and even amazed when they saw the light skinned Spaniards. I also believe that Cortes wasn’t the first outsider to make contact with the Aztecs but I do believe he was the first light skinned person to make contact with them because of Moctezumas reaction to Cortes description. Hernan Cortes was a Spanish conquistador who defeated the Aztecs with less than 1000 soldiers and a handful of horses. Some reasons that have to do with the Aztecs fall from power are the Prophecy of Quetzalcoatle, their Emperor Moctezuma, enemy tribes, disadvantages in technology, their omens, disease, and lastly their warfare rituals.