NPO #6: Underworld Essay and God Rant

Welcome to the clearing at the end of the path, Ticketholders!
Last week, I ended New Piece Offerings by mentioning WWE Superstar John Cena, before doing a Ticketverse Throwback about a movie in which he starred. This week, I ended the GFT Retrospective by mentioning the classic rock band, Styx. And today, I bring you an essay of mine FROM Period 3, February 17, 2002 titled The Underworld. I am a huge fan of all manner of mythology, whether it be represented in comic books, Stephen King super-series, or the old-fashioned way (passed along from one dead origin story enthusiast to the next over the span of centuries until it winds up being discussed by a bunch of hormonal pre-adults, most of whom can't string a coherent thought together on paper). So when I had the opportunity to take an elective English class whose sole focus was mythology, I grabbed it by the Cretan oysters!
The purpose of the assignment was to compare and contrast (because that's what 90 percent of essay prompts ask you to do) the Greek Underworld, Dante's Inferno, and the beliefs of modern day Americans. Don't worry. I am fully capable of stringing a coherent thought together--on paper, at least; speaking out loud usually gets me in trouble. I scored a five out of six on this essay (millennial grading system again), which is like getting an A.
Be warned that this will be a long post. I intend to break out of the essay's flow at times to criticize my own work and interject new viewpoints that I have come to over the intervening fifteen years. So here goes.

Sean Wilkinson

February 17, 2002

Period 3

The Underworld

Everyone has different ideas of where they go after death. Some say they will go to Heaven. Some deny that they should go to Hell. Some believe that life ends in dust. As shown by the time gap between ancient Greece and 14th century Italy, these beliefs can change with time and location. There are many differences between the Greek Underworld, Dante's Inferno, and the beliefs of modern-day Americans.

Essaymaster's Note: This is how you write the introductory paragraph of an essay. Ignore the fact that I just called myself the Essaymaster, but acknowledge the fact that I got an A on this assignment (have, in fact, never scored anything below a B on any given essay, ever) when I say this. I'm being as objective as anyone critiquing their own work can possibly be. It has clever juxtaposition, fact-based logic, and ends with a clear statement of what the author intends to demonstrate by the end of the essay. That's not to say that every essay requires clever juxtaposition specifically, just that some attention-grabber is necessary to get the reader to understand the author's temperament and thought processes as succinctly as possible. Wordplay and juxtaposition may be cheap, textbook tactics, but that's because they work. Notice that my chosen focus was more in line with the contrast between the three subjects. I was taught from an early age to talk and write about what I know, and while it may seem a lazy approach, it is one I recommend. If your thesis statement (the final sentence of your introduction) is something you believe in and can easily defend, you won't be fighting yourself for the next four paragraphs of your essay. On to the second paragraph.

First, there is the Underworld of Ancient Greece. In Tartarus (the Greeks' version of Hell), the only punishment was the sound of "wailing and gnashing of teeth."

Essaymaster's Note: Each of the three middle paragraphs should defend or demonstrate the author's position, preferably in the order listed in the thesis statement. The quote I used here is from Matthew 13:42, which refers to the Western interpretation of Hell, or of a spiritual state disconnected from God, but at the time it was featured in supplemental materials where the quote directly referenced Tartarus. I was unable to locate those materials in my hard files or any such correlation online. That this is actually a Bible quote makes this essay age well in that it adds a measure of comparison between Greek and Western religion that it was previously lacking. Quotes and references like this are called '"concrete details," and each of the three middle paragraphs should use and comment on at least three concrete details. Now for the commentary.

Like Dante's view of the Inferno, the punishment here fits the Greek lifestyle. The fact that Greece was home to many famous philosophers shows that knowledge was important to the Greeks. So it's fitting that they should invent a psychological punishment for the residents of Tartarus.

Essaymaster's Note: Reading this again, I don't think I started out my commentary on this particular concrete detail with a very clear sentence. Also, the newly realized knowledge that my commentary here hinges on false attribution of a quote completely ruins the effectiveness of said commentary. New knowledge also has me seeing this quote and commentary as an overly simplified view of the punishments available in Tartarus (see Sysiphus, for example), really making it more of an atmospheric description than anything else. But accounting for the materials I had available to me at the time, in an age where the Internet was still relatively young, I still see merit in the structure and competency of the argument I was making.

In the Underworld, there were also Judges who decided whether a shade would go to Tartarus or the Elysium Fields. Also, the shades sent to the Elysium Fields had to drink from the River of Forgetfulness to forget their past. This probably relates to the Greeks' belief in the cycle of life because it allows the shades a fresh start. Unlike the Inferno, the Underworld focused on a person being good or bad instead of concentrating on how each person screwed up.

Essaymaster's Note: Just nitpicking, but Elysium Fields is the name of the place. Elysian Fields is the descriptive form and probably would have made this section flow better. The River of Forgetfulness is also called the Lethe River. Commentary here seems weak and speculative, but to the audience at the time, it was intuitive reasoning. Also, "screwed up" is an unprofessional word choice in this academic context. I should have gone with something like "how each person failed their society." Always keep the audience in mind when writing. Now, let's wrap up this paragraph....

The Judges not only symbolized a degree of simplicity in the Underworld, they also symbolized the general idea of the gods' superiority over man because Tartarus was a prison with no escapees. As they say, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

Essaymaster's Note: My younger self seems to have a bit of a prejudiced leaning here, clearly advocating the simplicity of the Greek notion of the Underworld over Dante's Inferno, even though the latter has yet to be fully explained. Showing prejudice can be both a good thing and a bad thing in essay writing. It can serve as a strong emotional component to one's argument by showing how passionate his/her position is. But too much prejudice and passion can alienate the intended audience or compromise the ethical and logical components of an argument. Biased, but a structurally sound essay paragraph that did what it set out to do.

In addition, there is the Inferno, designed by Dante to categorize the sinners of his time and give each a fitting punishment. All of Dante's least favorite sins were related to one: fraud. The fraudulent were considered despicable to Dante because trust was important in his time (the Great Schism was happening at this time). Anyone who did not believe as he (or anyone else for that matter) did was guilty of fraud, treason, or heresy. Therefore, loyalty to the country and church was also important. If not for the loopholes and twisted thinking in the minds of just about everyone, they would all be burning, frozen, disfigured, or eaten in the Inferno. But Dante considers hypocrisy to be a major sin, too. Makes one think, doesn't it?

Essaymaster's Note: I didn't dissect this paragraph because I've already gone over structure in the first two. Also, it doesn't really need dissecting. It's the most well researched, passionate, ethically sound paragraph in the whole essay. Structure-wise, not so much. It appears to be a single concrete detail, followed by clever ranting, when three clearly defined concrete details are required per paragraph. But it follows a more coherent logic than the Underworld paragraph, and drives home the idea that Dante's complex, personal idea of the Inferno is hypocritical and therefore inferior to the democratically simplified notion of the Underworld. Also, I feel like I used the word "time" way too much. Speaking of ranting, here's the third middle paragraph:

Finally, I as an American have another view. Not to say that all Americans think as I do. It may be just me who thinks the way I do, but it's good to have an audience. Since we live in a more scientific world today, I personally don't see heresy as a very important sin unless another sin is committed in the name of any particular god. Fraud, greed, ego, hypocrisy, suicide, drug use, murder, and rape are HUGE sins on my personal list. I believe in some sort of afterlife or other, although I don't plan on giving it a location or a name until I get there myself. I realize that no one is perfect, so if there is a heaven, there won't be too many people there. Like Dante, and because I also have a knack for seeing the ironic, I believe in giving fitting punishments to each type of sinner. Therefore, it would be right to say that an underworld fits my religious beliefs better than a heaven and hell.

Essaymaster's Note: In writing, my teacher asked me to consider where I think the righteous should go. And honestly, I didn't have an answer and I still don't. The way I see it, God set everything in motion from the get-go; the Big Bang, evolution, everything religion tells us is wrong was something that God Himself set in motion. I'm not talking about murder or rape or anything truly wrong here. Truly wrong, truly evil stuff like that is what we do when we ignore what God is. I'm talking about ridiculous societal things like gender identity and same-sex relations. God took a bone out of man and made woman? That's the first historically recorded sex change. God made mankind in his image? Well, if mankind includes man and woman, then God is a hermaphrodite. Priests and nuns are supposed to have an intimate relationship with God and Jesus that holds greater significance than marriage? That's a polygamous, LGBT union. Taboo in almost every major religion, but God made it so. And after God set everything in motion, He left. Maybe He just walked off into the darkness like John Wayne at the end of a Western, or maybe He changed His name to Chuck and started writing paranormal mystery novels in Kansas. Whatever the case, He isn't up there somewhere with a white, flowing beard, answering every prayer and waiting to smite Donald Trump with a lightning bolt every time he tweets the word "covfefe." He left a little piece of Himself inside each of us--God, not Donald Trump. Call it conscience or determination or strength or whatever you want, but you don't have to be a charitable, heterosexual white man who has the entire Bible memorized and prays for everyone in his life every night to be considered "good." Listen to your conscience, will your way through adversity, and push your physical limitations. That's what good is. That's what God is to me. As for heaven and hell, maybe there is life after this one, and maybe there isn't. I think the rapper Atmosphere said it best: "Hell's not under the ground, Hell's all around/So either you don't know or you just don't care/But I was in Hell when you told me to go there." If you do right by the people around you and you live a full life with an unburdened mind, that's Heaven. Focus only on regrets and do wrong to your fellow man, that's Hell in your head and all around you. As for the soul, I think that's all in our brains, the chemical composition and the pathways formed by our experiences that form the essence of who each one of us is. We're just energy with an identity that operates a meat suit. And since energy can neither be created nor destroyed, the soul has to go somewhere or become something else. Maybe some of us become part of lightning or fire or a magnetic field, maybe we help grow a tree or a blade of grass, maybe some souls stay intact and linger as ghosts, while others get born into new bodies. It could all be part of the elaborate machine that God exploded into motion only He knows how long ago, or it could be that one, completely random fault that theoretically exists in every machine. Who knows? It's time to look at my closing paragraph.

Though there are many religions in the world today, it seems that each religion shares something similar. A god who was credited with the creation of man in each religion might go by a different name in each religion. Yet there is still the urge to compete for the best religion, just as there is an urge in business to compete for the best product when so many of the products are the same. While we may be caught up in this competition a bit too much, it is good that we continue to learn from and be entertained by the myths of each religion we compete against. Keeping the "enemy" (that's what it has turned into, anyway) closer allows us to learn more than if we stick with "friends."

Essaymaster's Note: A good closing paragraph in any essay should summarize the key points of the author's argument and reiterate how those points support the thesis statement. Looking back at this now, I don't see that I've necessarily done that. I don't even think this is the best example to start off demonstrating what a good essayist I am. My third middle paragraph feels more like a closing paragraph than this one does because it at least takes key points from the Underworld and Inferno paragraphs and arrives at a decision regarding the two. Also, my word choice here seems very limited and repetitive. That being said, what I had written for my closing paragraph does send a clear message of its own. Coupled with the introductory statement that I would be focusing on the differences between religions of different times and places, this "all religions are basically the same, so competition is meaningless" approach in the closing brings a feeling of dichotomy and resolution to the piece. A note of criticism from my teacher said that this paragraph takes "a bit of a negative view," and looking at the essay as a whole, I agree with her assessment. But it is also a view I can defend. The view of religion as both a commercial enterprise and a battlefield resonated with me at the time, and should resonate with all Americans, I think, because when I had written this essay, it had only been five months and six days since the World Trade Center attack on 9/11. America was basically a nation at war that was trying to maintain its status as a global, commercial entity. So while I sympathized with the impulse to rally the troops and nuke the Middle East into one, giant sheet of glass, I think the world has had enough of war, especially of war waged in the name of religious superiority. Every religion has at least one deity, a creation story, a fall from grace story, a murder story, a flood story, morality lessons that basically boil down to the same "thou shalt nots," and at least one epic tale of heroism. Do names and minor details change as the oral history passes from region to region and time to time? Yes. But should we blow each other up because Samson, Hercules, and Gilgamesh are from different countries? Should it piss us off so much that one religion Baptizes while another Christens? They're both water purification rituals, so no, it shouldn't. And if you feel so strongly that evolution is a falsehood, then stop throwing your own shit at each other like the monkeys you all know you came from. I could go on and on here about cults pretending to be religions, suicide bombers thinking they'll end up in a virginal orgy (talk about military intelligence being an oxymoron, huh?), Catholic and polygamist pedophiles, and Jehovah's Witnesses treating the word of God like a box of Girl Scout cookies when they all know that commercializing God is a sin, but I wouldn't be done writing this for another week and I'd probably break the Internet on file size alone, so I'll stop here.

Since I'm pretty much already living in the state of mind and spirit that I think of as Hell, I don't much care about making friends or enemies, so if you have any thoughts, feelings, or death threats, please leave them in the comments, and remember to like, share, subscribe, and make a sinner of me by clicking on some ads to commercialize this post. I'll be back on Thursday with another Ticketverse Throwback, so if I haven't alienated you, stay tuned for that.

Ticketmaster,
Poetrymaster,
Essaymaster (I promise),
out.