My Life as a Mythic Detective

            One of the largest overlying themes of Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, is in fact metamorphosis or transformation. Every few pages someone is transformed into a flower, a tree, an animal, a star, a guy, or a girl.  Everything in the stories must undergo a transformation, but that is the story of life.  Small seeds transform into huge trees, and insignificant caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies.  What appears to be a rock can turn into a bird, a reptile, or an amphibian.  Ovid has taught me that everything must undergo transformations in order to survive and grow. 

 In order for books to be good they have to have dynamic characters, which are characters that evolve from the beginning of the book to the end.  They grow and learn and by the end of the book they are not the same people that the book started with.  At the same time the reader has changed just a little too.  Much like reading Ovid, we have all changed and transformed into someone slightly different from who we were.  We now have the knowledge about the precedent behind every action that we take.  From this class we have transformed from average university students into mythic detectives.  We know the sad story behind the peacock’s feathers, and view every tree as a person in another form.  No matter how hard we try to deny it, Ovid has affected us all.  We can no longer see the world through the rose-colored glasses we had on when we first walked through that door; instead we now see the world in a different light as it truly is.  Because of this class we have all now started our own transformation from the uninformed to the enlightened.

As humans we are forced to undergo changes throughout our lives in order to move forward and grow.  As we travel through life we are transformed from a helpless baby who depends on others, into an adult who has others depending on him or her.   None of us is the same person we were when we were twelve, or even the same person we were before we started this class.  Although our transformations may not be as elaborate as the one’s mentioned in Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, they still affect us just as much.   Through Ovid we can realize that change isn’t always such a negative thing. 

  If Daphne didn’t transform she would not be remembered as the girl who turned into a laurel tree, instead she would be just another victim of the gods.  But she transformed and her name lives on through those who know her story, and through the Laurel tree as a permanent remembrance of her life and death.  For those of us who have taken Professor Sexson’s class trees will always be a reminder of those we have lost.  The same is true of the other mythic people featured in Ovid’s The Metamorphoses. If Io was not forcefully turned into a cow to hid Jove’s adultery, then she would just be another name in a long list of Jovian affairs.  Her whole story would have ended differently and it affect the stories of many others.

 A lot of the individuals featured in Ovid are transformed as a form of punishment, while only a few are transformed in order to preserve their lives.   But is there transformation really a form of punishment?  Because of their misdeeds, and their transformation into another shape, we are able to learn.  We now know that being too vain like Narcissus or too proud such as Arachne was, will only lead to our downfall and our transformation into something that we had not envisioned.  From Daedalus and his son Icarus, we know that if we fly too high we will get burned but also that if we fly to low we will die just the same.  They also show us how holding onto grief can transform us into a monster, and instead we should be thankful for the time we have.  Because of Ovid we have transformed and realize that the stories we have learn about in these past few weeks can be the stories of our lives.  We continue to make the same mistakes that those before us have made countless times, but it is necessary so that we transform into who we are meant to be and achieve.  The Ovidian stories are preserved in us, as we reenact them, learn from them, and transform.  In taking this class we are now some of the enlightened few who know this, and we accept it because we have no other option.  As others wonder as to the meanings behind their actions, we know that the answers can be found in Ovid.  As we move through life and transform into different people then we are now, we can rest assured in the fact that others have overcome the same struggles and fears.  And just as the snake transforms by shedding its skin we too shed our skin and transform.