Absurd Actions of Meursault in The Stranger by Albert Camus

In â€Å"The Stranger† by Camus, Meursault’s actions throughout the story can be summed up in one word, absurd. From the start of the story Meursault showed no regard to human life. Life to him was meaningless. His action toward his mother’s death was the 1st encounter into how emotionless, cold, untouched unmoved Meursault was. Although he attended her funeral he was only there in the physical. Natures’ element and the environment around him was more of concern to him than the death of his mother. He was basking in how bright the sky was, and then got frustrated because the sun was so hot he was sweating, stating â€Å"The sweat was pouring down my face†. (Camus, 1988, pg. 16) He also couldn’t remember anything about the funeral except for one thing, stating, â€Å"everything seemed to happen so fast, so deliberately, so naturally that I don’t remember any of it anymore, except for one thing, the nurse spoke to me, she said â€Å"if you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke, but if you go too fast, you work up a sweat†. (Camus, 1988, pg. 17) Another disregard to human life showed up in his relationship with Marie, it was all about the physical, he was without emotion. â€Å"That evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn’t mean anything but that I probably didn’t love her.†(Camus, 1988, pg.Show MoreRelatedEssay Theory of the Absurd1667 Words   |  7 PagesAccording to critic Mark Esslin, the concept of â€Å"Theatre of the Absurd† relates to the â€Å"playwrights loosely grouped under the label of the absurd attempt to convey their sense of bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an inexplicable universe† (â€Å"The Theatre†). Esslin stressed the fact that plays and stories belonging to the â€Å"Theatre of the Absurd† were composed of situations dealin g with the way a human reacts to an event, without any form of importance, thus only stressing over insignificantRead MoreIsolationism Of The Stranger And The Thief1397 Words   |  6 PagesIsolationism in The Stranger and The Thief Though there are multiple elements in both Albert Camus’ The Stranger, and Fuminori Nakamura’s The Thief that allow each author to develop their novels, none is more important that the deployment of isolationism. Though both Camus and Nakamura give their protagonists isolated states at an award winning level, Camus does so in a better way through the addition of how Meursault copes with elements of the absurd. One of the first things readers notice aboutRead More Absurdity in Albert Camus’ The Stranger Essay2431 Words   |  10 PagesThe word absurd or absurdity is very peculiar in that there is no clear definition for the term. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary gave its definition of absurd as having no rational or orderly relationship to human life: meaningless, also: lacking order or value. Many existential philosophers have defined it in their own manner. Soren Kierkegarrd, a pre-World War II German philosopher, defined absurd as that quality of Christian faith which runs counter to all reasonable human expectationRead MoreThe Stranger By Albert Camus1495 Words   |  6 Pages Albert Camus said, â€Å"Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.† In other terms, Camus is indicating that abs urdity affects us all even if it’s hidden all the way on the bottom, but it’s the joy that comes from absurdity that makes us take risks and live freely without any thought or focus. Camus also specifies that the onlyRead MoreEssay on The Caracter of Meursault in The Stranger (The Outsider)1136 Words   |  5 PagesThe Caracter of Meursault in The Stranger      Ã‚   Albert Camus The Stranger is a startling novel at worst and a haunting classic at best. Camus presents a thrilling story of a man devoid of emotion, even regarding the most sensitive, personal matters. The main character, Meursault shows no feelings after the death of his mother, during his romantic relationship with Marie, or during his trial for the murder of an Arab. Meursault never shows feelings of love, regret, remorse, or sadnessRead MoreLiterary Analysis: How Meursault Is Indifferent in the Stranger, by Albert Camus874 Words   |  4 Pagesanalysis: How Meursault is indifferent in The Stranger, by Albert Camus Although Meursault is the title character and narrator of Albert Camus’ short novel The Stranger, he is also a somewhat flat character. His apparent indifferent demeanor may be a convenience to Camus, who mainly wanted to display his ideas of absurdism. And as a flat character, Meursault is not fully delineated: he lacks deep thought and significant change. His purpose is that of a first-person narrator whose actions embody theRead MoreMeursault - The Anti-Hero Protagonist Essay1730 Words   |  7 Pagespeople who are like Meursault, the anti-hero protagonist of Albert Camus The Stranger, written in 1942, the world is completely without either. Camus story explores the world through the eyes of Meursault, who is quite literally a stranger to society in his indifference to meaning, values, and morals. In this novel, this protagonist lives on through life with this indifference, and is prosecuted and sentenced to die for it. Through Meursault and his ventures in The Stranger , Camus expresses to theRead MoreAlberts Aimless Absurdity898 Words   |  4 PagesIn Albert Camus’ novella, The Stranger, he exposes his beliefs on absurdism through the narration of Meursault. Camus’ definition of absurdism is a philosophy based on the belief that the universe is illogical and meaningless. Camus, founder of absurdism and French Nobel Prize winning author, sends the reader his underlying theme that life is meaningless and has no ulti-mate significance. This underlying theme of life’s absurdity is extremely personal to Camus through his own individual experiencesRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book The Stranger 1905 Words   |  8 PagesTaisha Pacheco 8/14/2015 Mrs. Bauman AP lit Block F The Stranger The major theme in the Stranger is â€Å"absurdism†. In the Stranger, the main settings are: Meursault’s home, the beach where the Arab was murdered, the courthouse, and eventually jail. The Stranger is taken place in Algeria in the 1940’s. The prosecutor characterizes Meursault as a murderer, as a monster. In page one hundred and two, the prosecutor states: â€Å" For if in the course of what has been a long career I have strongly as todayRead MoreAnalysis Of Meursault A Stranger To Society1026 Words   |  5 PagesMeursault, a man living in Algiers, takes a bus to Marengo to attend his mother’s funeral after receiving a telegram. After the funeral, he seems unaffected by her death and he briefly describes his outing with Marie, his co-worker. Later on, he meets Raymond, an abuser of women, and agrees to go with him to his friend’s beach house. There, he gets entangled in a ruthless murder, and is ultimately sentenced to death. During his l ast hours, Meursault realizes how meaningless and pointless life is

Conventions Of Realism And Romance Emily Bronte s ...

Bhavya Chhabra Professor Henry Staten English 300 10 December 2014 Conventions of Realism and Romance in Relationships: Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is regarded as one of the most iconic pieces of Gothic romance in English literature. Published in 1847, this novel was at the crossroads of the ending of the era of romanticism, and the beginning of the era of realism. Romanticism was brought about as a response to the neoclassical movement and the age of enlightenment, which spanned from the 17th to the 19th centuries. In addition to the rampant popularization of romantic heroes, the romance movement also brought a fresh wave of nostalgia and a reinvigorated passion for the old Gothic period, which resulted in many artists attempting to have Gothic romance influences in their works. The realism movement also saw it’s nascency at this time; Influenced by the industrial revolution and an increase in the interest of science, the realism movement attempted to show the life and mannerisms of the middle class, including their social, political and economic problems. These influences are pres ent in Bronte’s novel. Wuthering Heights, consequently, is a highly complex Gothic novel, focused not only on the representation of reality, and its realistic nuances, such as problems with class, economics, and wealth, but also focused on maintaining a spiritual and passionate persona as well; Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship is a prime example of a union of theShow MoreRelated A Comparison of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen Essay2446 Words   |  10 Pagesoriginally meant â€Å"romance-like†, that is, resembling the fanciful character of medieval romances.’ (Encarta ® Encyclopedia). This kind of romance narrative was used by Gothic novelists such as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein (1818) and Emily Jane Brontà « who wrote Wuthering Heights (1847). Yet novels with more contemporary settings and subjects, novels of manners and of domestic life for example, also have strong, if different, connections to romance conventions. ‘The novels

What Is Literature free essay sample

What is literature? Youd think this would be a central question for literary theory, but in fact it has not seemed to matter very much. Why should this be? There appear to be two main reasons. First, since theory itself intermingles ideas from philosophy, linguistics, history, political theory, and psychoanalysis, why should theorists worry about whether the texts theyre reading are literary or not? For students and teachers of literature today there is a whole range of critical projects, topics to read and write about-such as images of women in the early twentieth centurywhere you can deal with both literary and non-literary works. You can study Virginia Woolfs novels or Freuds case histories or both, and the distinction doesnt seem methodologically crucial. Its not that all texts are somehow equal: some texts are taken to be richer, more powerful, more exemplary, more contestatory, more central, for one reason or another. But both literary and non-literary works can be studied together and in similar ways. Literariness outside literature Second, the distinction has not seemed central because works of theory have discovered what is most simply called the literariness of non-literary phenomena. Qualities often thought to be literary turn out to be crucial to nonliterary discourses and practices as well. For instance, discussions of -17- OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS the nature of historical understanding have taken as a model what is involved in understanding a story. Characteristically, historians do not produce explanations that are like the predictive explanations of science: they cannot show that when X and Y occur, Z will necessarily happen. What they do, rather, is to show how one thing led to another, how the First World Warcame to break out, not why it had to happen. The model for historical explanation is thus the logic of stories: the way a story shows how something came to happen, connecting the initial situation, the development, and the outcome in a way that makes sense. The model for historical intelligibility, in short, is literary narrative. We who hear and read stories are good at telling whether a plot makes sense, hangs together, or whether the story remains unfinished. If the same models of what makes sense and what counts as a story characterize both literary and historical narratives, then distinguishing between them need not seem an urgent theoretical matter. Similarly, theorists have come to insist on the importance in non-literary textswhether Freuds accounts of his psychoanalytic cases or works of philosophical argumentof rhetorical devices such as metaphor, which have been thought crucial to literature but have often been considered purely ornamental in other sorts of discourses. In showing how rhetorical figures shape thought in other discourses as well, theorists demonstrate a powerful literariness at work in supposedly non-literary texts, thus complicating the distinction between the literary and the non-literary. But the fact that I describe this situation by speaking of the discovery of the literariness of non-literary phenomena indicates that the notion of literature continues to play a role and needs to be addressed. What sort of question? We find ourselves back at the key question, What is literature? , which will not go away. But what sort of question is it? If a 5-year-old is asking, its easy. Literature, you answer, is stories, poems, and plays. But if the -18- questioner is a literary theorist, its harder to know how to take the query. It might be a question about the general nature of this object, literature, which both of you already know well. What sort of object or activity is it? What does it do? What purposes does it serve? Thus understood, What is literature? asks not for a definition but for an analysis, even an argument about why one might concern oneself with literature at all. But What is literature? might also be a question about distinguishing characteristics of the works known as literature: what distinguishes them from non-literary works? What differentiates literature from other human activities or pastimes? Now people might ask this question because they were wondering how to decide which books are literature and which are not, but it is more likely that they already have an idea what counts as literature and want to know something else: are there any essential, distinguishing features that literary works share? This is a difficult question. Theorists have wrestled with it, but without notable success. The reasons are not far to seek: works of literature come in all shapes and sizes and most of them seem to have more in common with works that arent usually called literature than they do with some other works recognized as literature. Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre, for instance, more closely resembles an autobiography than it does a sonnet, and a poem by Robert BurnsMy love is like a red, red rose-resembles a folk-song more than it does Shakespeare Hamlet. Are there qualities shared by poems, plays, and novels that distinguish them from, say, songs, transcriptions of conversations, and autobiographies? Historical variations Even a bit of historical perspective makes this question more complex. For twenty-five centuries people have written works that we call literature today, but the modern sense of literature is scarcely two centuries old. Prior to 1800literature and analogous terms in other European languages meant writings or book knowledge, Even today, a scientist who says -19- the literature on evolution is immense means not that many poems and novels treat the topic but that much has been written about it. And works that today are studied as literature in English or Latin classes in schools and universities were once treated not as a special kind of writing but as fine examples of the use of language and rhetoric. They were instances of a larger category of exemplary practices of writing and thinking, which included speeches, serm ons, history, and philosophy. Students were not asked to interpret them, as we now interpret literary works, seeking to explain what they are really about. On the contrary, students memorized them, studied their grammar, identified their rhetorical figures and their structures or procedures of argument. A work such as Virgil Aeneid, which today is studied as literature, was treated very differently in schools prior to 1850. The modern Western sense of literature as imaginative writing can be traced to the German Romantic theorists of the late eighteenth century and, if we want a particular source, to a book published in 1800 by a French Baroness, Madame de Stael On Literature Considered in its Relations with Social Institutions. But even if we restrict ourselves to the last two centuries, the category of literature becomes slippery: would works which today count as literaturesay poems that seem snippets of ordinary conversation, without rhyme or discernible metrehave qualified as literature for Madame de Stael? And once we begin to think about nonEuropean cultures, the question of what counts as literature becomes increasingly difficult. It is tempting to give it up and conclude that literature is whatever a given society treats as literaturea set of texts that cultural arbiters recognize as belonging to literature. Such a conclusion is completely unsatisfying, of course. It simply displaces instead of resolving the question: rather than ask what is literature? we need to ask what makes us (or some other society) treat something as literature? There are, though, other categories that work in this way, referring not to specific properties but only to changing criteria of social groups. Take the question What is a weed? Is there an essence of -20- weednessa special something, a je ne sais quoi, that weeds share and that distinguishes them from non-weeds? Anyone who has been enlisted to help weed a garden knows how hard it is to tell a weed from a nonweed and may wonder whether there is a secret. What would it be? How do you recognize a weed? Well, the secret is that there isnt a secret. Weeds are simply plants that gardeners dont want to have growing in their gardens. If you were curious about weeds, seeking the nature of weedness, it would be a waste of time to try to investigate their botanical nature, to seek distinctive formal or physical qualities that make plants weeds. You would have to carry out instead historical, sociological, perhaps psychological enquiries about the sorts of plants that are judged undesirable by different groups in different places. Perhaps literature is like weed. But this answer doesnt eliminate the question. It changes it to what is involved in treating things as literature in our culture? Treating texts as literature Suppose you come across the following sentence: We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. What is this, and how do you know? Well, it matters a good deal where you come across it. If this sentence is printed on a slip in a Chinese fortune cookie, you may well take it as an unusually enigmatical fortune, but when it is offered (as it is here) as an example, you cast around for possibilities among uses of language familiar to you. is it a riddle, asking us to guess the secret? Might it be an advertisement for something called Secret? Ads often rhymeWinston tastes good, like a cigarette should and they have grown increasingly -21- enigmatic in their attempts to jostle a jaded public. But this sentence seems detached from any readily imaginable practical context, including that of selling a product. This, and the fact that it rhymes and, after the first two words, follows a regular rhythm of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables (round in a ring and suppose) creates the possibility that this might be poetry, an instance of literature. There is a puzzle here, though: the fact that this sentence has no obvious practical import is what mainly creates the possibility that it might be literature, but could we not achieve that effect by lifting other sentences out of the contexts that make it clear what they do? Suppose we take a sentence out of an instruction booklet, a recipe, an advertisement, a newspaper, and set it down on a page in isolation: Stir vigorously and allow to sit five minutes. Is this literature? Have I made it literature by extracting it from the practical context of a recipe? Perhaps, but it is scarcely clear that I have. Something seems lacking; the sentence seems not to have the resources for you to work with. To make it literature you need, perhaps, to imagine a title whose relation to the line would pose a problem and exercise the imagination: for instance, The Secret, or The Quality of Mercy. Something like that would help, but a sentence fragment such as A sugar plum on a pillow in the morning seems to have a better chance of becoming literature because its failure to be anything except an image invites a certain kind of attention, calls for reflection. So do sentences where the relation between their form and their content provides potential food for thought. Thus the opening sentence of a book of philosophy, W. O. Quine From a Logical Point of View, might conceivably be a poem: A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. -22- Set down in this way on a page, surrounded by intimidating margins of silence, this sentence can attract a certain kind of attention that we might call literary: an interest in the words, their relations to one another, and their implications, and particularly an interest in how what is said relates to the way it is said. That is, set down in this way, this sentence seems able to live up to a certain modern idea of a poem and to respond to a kind of attention that today is associated with literature. If someone were to say this sentence to you, you would ask, what do you mean? but if you take the sentence as a poem, the question isnt quite the same: not what does the speaker or author mean but what does the poem mean? How does this language work? What does this sentence do? Isolated in the first line, the words A curious thing may raise the question of what is a thing and what is it for a thing to be curious. What is a thing? is one of the problems of ontology, the science of being or study of what exists. But thing in the phrase a curious thing is not a physical object but something like a relation or aspect which doesnt seem to exist in the same way that a stone or a house does. The sentence preaches simplicity but seems not to practise what it preaches, illustrating, in the ambiguities of thing, something of the forbidding complexities of ontology. But perhaps the very simplicity of the poemthe fact that it stops after simplicity, as if no more need be saidgives some credibility to the implausible assertion of simplicity. At any rate, isolated in this way, the sentence can give rise to the sort of activity of interpretation associated with literaturethe sort of activity I have been carrying out here. What can such thought-experiments tell us about literature? They suggest, first of all, that when language is removed from other contexts, detached from other purposes, it can be interpreted as literature (though it must possess some qualities that make it responsive to such interpretation). If literature is language decontextualized, cut off from other functions and purposes, it is also itself a context, which promotes or elicits special kinds of attention. For instance, readers attend to potential complexities and look for implicit meanings, without assuming, say, that -23- the utterance is telling them to do something. To describe literature would be to analyse a set of assumptions and interpretive operations readers may bring to bear on such texts. Conventions of literature One relevant convention or disposition that has emerged from the analysis of stories (ranging from personal anecdotes to entire novels) goes by the forbidding name of the hyper-protected cooperative principle but is actually rather simple. Communication depends on the basic convention that participants are cooperating with one another and that, therefore, what one person says to the other is likely to be relevant. If I ask you whether George is a good tudent and you reply, he is usually punctual, I make sense of your reply by assuming that you are cooperating and saying something relevant to my question. Instead of complaining, You didnt answer my question, I may conclude that you did answer implicitly and indicated that theres little positive to be said about George as a student. I assume, that is, that you are cooperating unl ess there is compelling evidence to the contrary. Now literary narratives can be seen as members of a larger class of stories, narrative display texts, utterances whose relevance to listeners lies not in information they convey but in their tellability. Whether you are telling an anecdote to a friend or writing a novel for posterity, you are doing something different from, say, testifying in court: you are trying to produce a story that will seem worth it to your listeners: that will have some sort of point or significance, will amuse or give pleasure. What sets off literary works from other narrative display texts is that they have undergone a process of selection: they have been published, reviewed, and reprinted, so that readers approach them with the assurance that others have found them well constructed and worth it. So for literary works, the cooperative principle is hyper-protected. We can put up with many obscurities and apparent irrelevancies, without assuming that this makes no sense. Readers assume that in literature complications of language ultimately have a communicative purpose and, instead of imagining that the speaker or writer is being uncooperative, as they might in other speech contexts, they struggle to interpret elements that flout principles of efficient communication in the interests of some further communicative goal. Literature is an institutional label that gives us reason to expect that the results of our reading efforts will be worth it. And many of the features of literature follow from the willingness of readers to pay attention, to explore uncertainties, and not immediately ask what do you mean by that? Literature, we might conclude, is a speech act or textual event that elicits certain kinds of attention. It contrasts with other sorts of speech acts, such as imparting information, asking questions, or making promises. Most of the time what leads readers to treat something as literature is that they find it in a context that identifies it as literature: in a book of poems or a section of a magazine, library, or bookstore. A puzzle But we have another puzzle here. Arent there special ways of organizing language that tell us something is literature? Or is the fact that we know something is literature what leads us to give it a kind of attention we dont give newspapers and, as a result, to find in it special kinds of organization and implicit meanings? The answer must surely be that both cases occur: sometimes the object has features that make it literary but sometimes it is the literary context that makes us treat it as literature. But highly organized language doesnt necessarily make something literature: nothing is more highly patterned than the telephone directory. And we cant make just any piece of language literature by calling it literature: I cant pick up my old chemistry textbook and read it as a novel. On the one hand, literature is not just a frame in which we put language: not every sentence will make it as literature if set down on a page as a poem. But, on the other hand, literature is not just a special kind of language, for many literary works dont flaunt their difference from other sorts of language; they function in special ways because of the special attention they receive. We have a complicated structure here. We are dealing with two different perspectives that overlap, intersect, but dont seem to yield a synthesis. We can think of literary works as language with particular properties or features, and we can think of literature as the product of conventions and a certain kind of attention. Neither perspective successfully incorporates the other, and one must shift back and forth between them. I take up five -26points theorists have made about the nature of literature: with each, you start from one perspective but must, in the end, make allowance for the other. The nature of literature 1. Literature as the foregrounding of language Literariness is often said to lie above all in the organization of language that makes literature distinguishable from language used for other purposes. Literature is language that foregrounds language itself: makes it strange, thrusts it at youLook! Im language! so you cant forget that you are dealing with language shaped in odd ways. In particular, poetry organizes the sound plane of language so as to make it something to reckon with. Here is the beginning of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins called Inversnaid: This darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in coomb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home. The foregrounding of linguistic patterningthe rhythmical repetition of sounds in burn brown rollrock road roaringas well as the unusual verbal combinations such as rollrock make it clear that we are dealing with language organized to attract attention to the linguistic structures themselves. But it is also true that in many cases readers dont notice linguistic patterning unless something is identified as literature. You dont listen when reading standard prose. The rhythm of this sentence, you will find, is scarcely one that strikes the readers ear; but if a rhyme should suddenly appear, it makes the rhythm something that you hear. The rhyme, a conventional mark of literariness, makes you notice the rhythm that was there all along. When a text is framed as literature, we are disposed to -27- attend to sound patterning or other sorts of linguistic organization we generally ignore. . Literature as the integration of Language Literature is language in which the various elements and components of the text are brought into a complex relation. When I receive a letter requesting a contribution for some worthy cause, I am unlikely to find that the sound is echo to the sense, but in literature there are relationsof reinforcement or contrast and dissonancebetween the structures of different linguistic levels: between sound and meaning, between grammatical organization and thematic patterns. A rhyme, by bringing two words together (suppose/knows), brings their meanings into relation (is knowing the opposite of supposing? ). But it is clear that neither (1) nor (2) nor both together provides a definition of literature. Not all literature foregrounds language as (1) suggests (many novels do not), and language foregrounded is not necessarily literature. Tongue-twisters (Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers) are seldom thought to be literature, though they call attention to themselves as language and trip you up. In advertisements the linguistic devices are often foregrounded even more blatantly than in lyrics and different structural levels may be integrated more imperiously. One eminent theorist, Roman Jakobson, cites as his key example of the poetic function of language not a line from a lyric but a political slogan from the American presidential campaign of Dwight D. (Ike) Eisenhower: I like Ike. Here, through word play, the object liked ( Ike) and the liking subject (I) are both enveloped in the act (like): how could I not like Ike, when I and Ike are both contained in like? Through this ad, the necessity of liking Ike seems inscribed in the very structure of the language. So, its not that the relations between different levels of language are relevant only in literature but that in literature we are more likely to look for and exploit relations between form and meaning or theme and grammar and, attempting to understand the contribution each element makes to the effect of the whole, find integration, harmony, tension, or dissonance. Accounts of literariness focused on the foregrounding or on the integration of language dont provide tests by which, say, Martians could separate works of literature from other sorts of writing. Such accounts function, like most claims about the nature of literature, to direct attention to certain aspects of literature which they claim to be central. To study something as literature, this account tells us, is to look above all at the organization of its language, not to read it as the expression of its authors psyche or as the reflection of the society that produced it. 3. Literature as fiction One reason why readers attend to literature differently is that its utterances have a special relation to the worlda relation we call fictional. The literary work is a linguistic event which projects a fictional world that includes speaker, actors, events, and an implied audience (an audience that takes shape through the works decisions about what must be explained and what the audience is presumed to know). Literary works refer to imaginary rather than historical individuals ( Emma Bovary, Huckleberry Finn), but fictionality is not limited to characters and events. Deictics, as they are called, orientational features of language that relate to the situation of utterance, such as pronouns (I, you) or adverbials of place and time (here, there, now, then, yesterday, tomorrow), function in special ways in literature. Now in a poem (now gathering swallows twitter in the skies) refers not to the instant when the poet first wrote down that word, or to the moment of first publication, but to a time in the poem, in the fictional world of its action. And the I that appears in a lyric poem, such as Wordsworths I wandered lonely as a cloud , is also fictional; it refers to the speaker of the poem, who may be quite different from the empirical individual, William Wordsworth, who wrote the poem. (There may well be strong connections between what happens to the speaker or narrator of the poem and what happened to Wordsworth at some moment in his life. But a poem written by an old man may have a young speaker and vice versa. And, notoriously, the narrators of novels, the characters who say I as they recount the story, may have experiences and make judgements that are quite different from those of their authors. ) In fiction, the relation of what speakers say to what authors think is always a matter of interpretation. So is the relationship between events recounted and situations in the world. Non-fictional discourse is usually embedded in a context that tells you how to take it: an instruction manual, a newspaper report, a letter from a charity. The context of fiction, though, explicitly leaves open the question of what the fiction is really about. Reference to the world is not so much a property of literary works as a function they are given by interpretation. If I tell a friend, Meet me for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe at eight tomorrow, he or she will take this as a concrete invitation and identify spatial and temporal referents from the context of utterance (tomorrow means 14 January 2002, eight mean 8 p. . Eastern Standard Time). But when the poet Ben Jonson writes a poem Inviting a Friend to Supper, the fictionality of this work makes its relation to the world a matter of interpretation: the context of the message is a literary one and we have to decide whether to take the poem as primarily characterizing the attitudes of a fictional speaker, outlining a bygone way of life, or suggesting that friendship and simple pleasures are what is most important to human happiness. Interpreting Hamlet is, among other things, a matter of deciding whether it should be read as talking about, say, the problems of Danish princes, or the dilemmas of men of the Renaissance experiencing changes in the conception of the self, or relations between men and their mothers in general, or the question of how representations (including literary ones) affect the problem of making sense of our experience. The fact that there are references to Denmark throughout the play doesnt mean that you necessarily read it as talking about Denmark; that is an interpretive decision. We can relate Hamlet to the world in different ways at several different levels. The fictionality of literature separates language from other contexts in which it might be used and leaves the works relation to the world open to interpretation. 4. Literature as aesthetic object The features of literature discussed so farthe supplementary levels of -30- linguistic organization, the separation from practical contexts of utterance, the fictional relation to the worldmay be brought together under the general heading of the aesthetic function of language. Aesthetics is historically the name for the theory of art and has involved debates about whether beauty is an objective property of works of art or a subjective response of viewers, and about the relation of the beautiful to the true and the good. For Immanuel Kant, the primary theorist of modern Western aesthetics, the aesthetic is the name of the attempt to bridge the gap between the material and the spiritual world, between a world of forces and magnitudes and a world of concepts. Aesthetic objects, such as paintings or works of literature, with their combination of sensuous form (colours, sounds) and spiritual content (ideas), illustrate the possibility of bringing together the material and the spiritual. A literary work is an aesthetic object because, with other communicative functions initially bracketed or suspended, it engages readers to consider the interrelation between form and content. Aesthetic objects, for Kant and other theorists, have a purposiveness without purpose. There is a purposiveness to their construction: they are made so that their parts will work together towards some end. But the end is the work of art itself, pleasure in the work or pleasure occasioned by the work, not some external purpose. Practically, this means that to consider a text as literature is to ask about the contribution of its parts to the effect of the whole but not to take the work as primarily destined to accomplishing some purpose, such as informing or persuading us. When I say that stories are utterances whose relevance is their tellability, I am noting that there is a purposiveness to stories (qualities that can make them good stories) but that this cannot easily be attached to some external purpose, and thus am registering the aesthetic, affective quality of stories, even non-literary ones. A good story is tellable, strikes readers or listeners as worth it. It may amuse or instruct or incite, can have a range of effects, but you cant define good stories in general as those that do any one of these things. -31- 5. Literature as intertextual or self-reflexive construct Recent theorists have argued that works are made out of other works: made possible by prior works which they take up, repeat, challenge, transform. This notion sometimes goes by the fancy name of intertextuality. A work exists between and among other texts, through its relations to them. To read something as literature is to consider it as a linguistic event that has meaning in relation to other discourses: for example, as a poem that plays on possibilities created by previous poems or as a novel that puts on stage and criticizes the political rhetoric of its day. Shakespeares sonnet My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun takes up the metaphors used in the tradition of love poetry and denies them (But no such roses see I in her cheeks)denies them as a way of praising a woman who, when she walks, treads on the ground. The poem has meaning in relation to the tradition that makes it possible. Now since to read a poem as literature is to relate it to other poems, to compare and contrast the way it makes sense with the ways others do, it is possible to read poems as at some level about poetry itself. They bear on the operations of poetic imagination and poetic interpretation. Here we encounter another notion that has been important in recent theory: that of the self-reflexivity of literature. Novels are at some level about novels, about the problems and possibilities of representing and giving shape or meaning to experience. So Madame Bovary can be read as an exploration of relations between Emma Bovarys real life and the way which both the romantic novels she reads and Flauberts own novel make sense of experience. One can always ask of a novel (or a poem) how what it implicitly says about making sense relates to the way it itself goes about making sense. Literature is a practice in which authors attempt to advance or renew literature and thus is always implicitly a reflection on literature itself. But once again, we find that this is something we could say about other forms: bumper stickers, like poems, may depend for their meaning on prior -32- bumper stickers: Nuke a Whale for Jesus! makes no sense without No Nukes, Save the Whales, and Jesus Saves, and one could certainly say hat Nuke a Whale for Jesus is really about bumper stickers. The intertextuality and selfreflexivity of literature is not, finally, a defining feature but a foregrounding of aspects of language use and questions about representation that may also be observed elsewhere. Properties versus consequences In each of these five cases we encounter the structure I mentioned above: we are dealing with what might be described as properties of literary works, features that mark them as literature, but with what could also be seen as the results of a particular kind of attention, a function that we accord language in considering it as literature. Neither perspective, it seems, can englobe the other to become the comprehensive perspective. The qualities of literature cant be reduced either to objective properties or to consequences of ways of framing language. There is one key reason for this which already emerged from the little thoughtexperiments at the beginning of this chapter. Language resists the frames we impose. It is hard to make the couplet We dance round in a ring into a fortunecookie fortune or Stir vigorously into a stirring poem. When we treat something as literature, when we look for pattern and coherence, there is resistance in the language; we have to work on it, work with it. Finally, the literariness of literature may lie in the tension of the interaction between the linguistic material and readers conventional expectations of what literature is. But I say this with caution, for the other thing we have learned from our five cases is that each quality identified as an important feature of literature turns out not to be a defining feature, since it can be found at work in other language uses. The functions of literature I began this chapter by noting that literary theory in the 1980s and 1990s has not focused on the difference between literary and non-literary works. -33- What theorists have done is to reflect on literature as a historical and ideological category, on the social and political functions that something called literature has been thought to perform. In nineteenth-century England, literature emerged as an extremely important idea, a special kind of writing charged with several functions. Made a subject of instruction in the colonies of the British Empire, it was charged with giving the natives an appreciation of the greatness of England and engaging them as grateful participants in a historic civilizing enterprise. At home it would counter the selfishness and materialism fostered by the new capitalist economy, offering the middle classes and the aristocrats alternative values and giving the workers a stake in the culture that, materially, relegated them to a subordinate position. It would at once teach disinterested appreciation, provide a sense of national greatness, create fellow-feeling among the classes, and ultimately, function as a replacement for religion, which seemed no longer to be able to hold society together. Any set of texts that could do all that would be very special indeed. What is literature that it was thought to do all this? One thing that is crucial is a special structure of exemplarity at work in literature. A literary work-Hamlet, for instance-is characteristically the story of a fictional character: it presents itself as in some way exemplary (why else would you read it? , but it simultaneously declines to define the range or scope of that exemplarityhence the ease with which readers and critics come to speak about the universality of literature. The structure of literary works is such that it is easier to take them as telling us about the human condition in general than to specify what narrower categories they describe or illuminate. Is Hamlet just about princes, or men of the Renaissance, or introspective young men, or people whose fathers have died in obscure circumstances? Since all such answers seem unsatisfactory, it is easier for readers not to answer, thus implicitly accepting a possibility of universality. In their particularity, novels, poems, and plays decline to explore what they are exemplary of at the same time that they invite all readers to become involved in the predicaments and thoughts of their narrators and characters. -34- But the combination of offering universality and addressing all those who can read the language has had a powerful national function. Benedict Anderson argues, in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, a work of political history that has become influential as theory, that works of literatureparticularly novelshelped to create national communities by their postulation of and appeal to a broad community of readers, bounded yet in principle open to all who could read the language. Fiction, Anderson writes, seeps quietly and continuously into reality, creating that remarkable confidence of community in anonymity which is the hallmark of modern nations. To present the characters, speakers, plots, and themes of English literature as potentially universal is to promote an open yet bounded imagined community to which subjects in the British colonies, for instance, are invited to aspire. In fact, the more the universality of literature is stressed, the more it may have a national function: asserting the universality of the vision of the world offered by Jane Austen makes England a very s pecial place indeed, the site of standards of taste and behaviour and, more important, of the moral scenarios and social circumstances in which ethical problems are worked out and personalities are formed. Literature has been seen as a special kind of writing which, it was argued, could civilize not just the lower classes but also the aristocrats and the middle classes. This view of literature as an aesthetic object that could make us better people is linked to a certain idea of the subject, to what theorists have come to call the liberal subject, the individual defined not by a social situation and interests but by an individual subjectivity (rationality and morality) conceived as essentially free of social determinants. The aesthetic object, cut off from practical purposes and inducing particular kinds of reflection and identifications, helps us to become liberal subjects through the free and disinterested exercise of an imaginative faculty that combines knowing and judging in the right relation. Literature does this, the argument goes, by encouraging consideration of complexities without a rush to judgement, engaging the mind in ethical issues, inducing readers to examine conduct (including -35- their own) as an outsider or a reader of novels would. It promotes disinterestedness, teaches sensitivity and fine discriminations, produces identifications with men and women of other conditions, thus promoting fellowfeeling. In 1860 an educator maintained, by converse with the thoughts and utterances of those who are intellectual leaders of the race, our heart comes to beat in accord with the feeling of universal humanity. We discover that no differences of class, or party, or creed can destroy the power of genius to charm and to instruct, and that above the smoke and stir, the din and turmoil of mans lower life of care and business and debate, there is a erene and luminous region of truth where all may meet and expatiate in common. Recent theoretical discussions have, not surprisingly, been critical of this conception of literature, and have focused above all on the mystification that seeks to distract workers from the misery of their condition by offering them access to this higher regionthrowing the workers a few novels to keep them from throwing up a few barricades, as Terry Eagleton puts it. But when we explore claims about what literature does, how it works as a social practice, we find arguments that are exceedingly difficult to reconcile. Literature has been given diametrically opposed functions. Is literature an ideological instrument: a set of stories that seduce readers into accepting the hierarchical arrangements of society? If stories take it for granted that women must find their happiness, if at all, in marriage; if they accept class divisions as natural and explore how the virtuous serving-girl may marry a lord, they work to legitimate contingent historical arrangements. Or is literature the place where ideology is exposed, revealed as something that can be questioned? Literature represents, for example, in a potentially intense and affecting way, the narrow range of options historically offered to women, and, in making this visible, raises the possibility of not taking it for granted. Both claims are thoroughly plausible: that literature is the vehicle of ideology and that literature is an instrument for its undoing. Here -36- again, we find a complex oscillation between potential properties of literature and attention that brings out these properties. We also encounter contrary claims about the relation of literature to action. Theorists have maintained that literature encourages solitary reading and reflection as the way to engage with the world and thus counters the social and political activities that might produce change. At best it encourages detachment or appreciation of complexity, and at worst passivity and acceptance of what is. But on the other hand, literature has historically been seen as dangerous: it promotes the questioning of authority and social arrangements. Plato banned poets from his ideal republic because they could only do harm, and novels have long been credited with making people dissatisfied with the lives they inherit and eager for something newwhether life in big cities or romance or revolution. By promoting identification across divisions of class, gender, race, nation, and age, books may promote a fellowfeeling that discourages struggle; but they may also produce a keen sense of injustice that makes progressive struggles possible. Historically, works of literature are credited with producing change: Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Toms Cabin, a best-seller in its day, helped create a revulsion against slavery that made possible the American Civil War. I return in Chapter 7 to the problem of identification and its effects: what role does the identification with literary characters and narrators play? For the moment we should note above all the complexity and diversity of literature as an institution and social practice. What we have here, after all, is an institution based on the possibility of saying anything you can imagine. This is central to what literature is: for any orthodoxy, any belief, any value, a literary work can mock it, parody it, imagine some different and monstrous fiction. From the novels of the Marquis de Sade, which sought to work out what might happen in a world where action followed a nature conceived as unconstrained appetite, to Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses which has caused so much outrage for its use of sacred -37- ames and motifs in a context of satire and parody, literature has been the possibility of fictionally exceeding what has previously been thought and written. For anything that seemed to make sense, literature could make it nonsense, go beyond it, transform it in a way that raised the question of its legitimacy and adequacy. Literature has been the activity of a cultural elite, and it has been what is sometimes called cultural capital: learning about literatur e gives you a stake in culture that may pay off in various ways, helping you fit in with people of higher social status. But literature cannot be reduced to this conservative social function: it is scarcely the purveyor of family values but makes seductive all manner of crimes, from Satans revolt against God in Milton Paradise Lost to Raskolnikovs murder of an old woman in Dostoevski Crime and Punishment. It encourages resistance to capitalist values, to the practicalities of getting and spending. Literature is the noise of culture as well as its information. It is an entropic force as well as cultural capital. It is a writing that calls for a reading and engages readers in problems of meaning. The paradox of literature Literature is a paradoxical institution because to create literature is to write according to existing formulasto produce something that looks like a sonnet or that follows the conventions of the novelbut it is also to flout those conventions, to go beyond them. Literature is an institution that lives by exposing and criticizing its own limits, by testing what will happen if one writes differently. So literature is at the same time the name for the utterly conventionalmoon rhymes with June and swoon, maidens are fair, knights are boldand for the utterly disruptive, where readers have to struggle to create any meaning at all, as in sentences like this from James Joyces Finnegans Wake: Eins within a space and a wearywide space it was er wohned a Mookse. The question what is literature? arises, I suggested earlier, not because -38- people are worried that they might mistake a novel for history or the message in a fortune-cookie for a poem but because critics and theorists hope, by saying what literature is, to promote what they take to be the most pertinent critical methods and to dismiss methods that neglect the most basic and distinctive aspects of literature. In the context of recent theory, the question what is literature? matters because theory has highlighted the literariness of texts of all sorts. To reflect on literariness is to keep before us, as resources for analysing these discourses, reading practices elicited by literature: the suspension of the demand for immediate intelligibility, reflection on the implications of means of expression, and attention to how meaning is made and pleasure produced.

The Aztec Nation Essay Example For Students

The Aztec Nation Essay A distant sound is heard. It sounds like a deep drum being hit with a heavy instrument. You hear it again and strain your eyes in the direction of the sound. All around you is dense jungle. Snakes slither between your legs. You hear the sound once again. In front of you is a dense stand of ferns. You part them and look down into a wide open valley. The valley gets so wide and it is so green that it takes your breath away. We will write a custom essay on The Aztec Nation specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now But that is not what you are looking at. You are staring at a huge city with glittering buildings shining in the spring sunlight. Smoke rises up from some of the many houses. You can see and hear children playing in the wide open fields in front of the shining buildings. Lamas and chickens are being bought and sold. You see bags of gold jewelry being bought and sold. Beyond the market place you can watch a religious ceremony. You hear the scream of a person being sacrificed to one of the gods. Beyond the city there are roads made of stone and canals full of pedestrians and canos. Who are these people and what are they doing here you wonder?The above paragraph describes what an early explorer in Mexico might have seen between 1400 and 1500 AD. The Aztec nation is one of the largest and most advanced Indian nations to ever exist on earth. Just about every part of the Aztec life was advance to such a state that at that time of the world the people were living better than many European nations. The Aztec nation is unique in its history, economy, environment, and way of life then any other nation at that time.Perhaps three to four thousand years ago, small bands of hunting-gathering peoples made their way across the land bridge that was the frozen Bering Strait, migrated southward through what is now Alaska, Canada, the United States, Central America, South America, and Mexico, settling along the way. One such hunting- gathering group settled in the Central Valley of what is now Mexico (Nicholson 1985). There is a long history of civilizations in the Central Valley of Mexico; as early as several centuries before Christ agricultural tribes had already settled, and by the birth of Christ had established as their great religious center Teotihuacan. The history of the Central Valley after circa the tenth century A.D. is one of tribal conflict and superiority.About the time of the fall of this agricultural civilization, which flourished from approximately the second to the tenth centuries A. D., a new tribe, who we know as the Toltecs, settled at Tula, Hidalgo. They belonged to a larger group known as the Nahua, or Nahuatl- speaking, and seem to have entered the Central Valley from the north or northwest. The Toltec civilization gradually replaced the older, agricultural civilization, as Toltec influence was felt as far as the Yucatan Peninsula and other areas occupied by the Mayan peoples. Yet by the eleventh century A.D., another tribe, the Chichimecs, had already begun to eclipse the Toltecs as the dominant group of the Central Valley. By approximately the thirteenth century, the Chichimecs had replaced the Toltecs (Wolf 1998). About this time, another Nahua tribe known as the Aztecs began their migration, in c. 1168. They left their mythical mysterious homeland called Aztlan, place of the herons, or Chicomoztoc, place of the seven caves, and migrated southwards through Michoacan (Leon-Portilla 1992). The Aztecs, or Crane People, arrived in the Central Valley and obtained permission to settle at Chapultepec in c. 1248 (Caso 1958). The tradition of tribal conflict in the Central Valley was continued; however, it seems that the Aztecs, at first, were practically enslaved by the other Nahua tribes inhabiting the Central Valley. The Aztec culture would not be subjugated, however, and continued in its struggle for power. By the fourteenth century the Aztecs had founded two settlements on islands in lakes: Tlaltetalco and Tenochtitlan. The traditional founding date of Tenochtitlan is 1325; the quest for the sacred site on which to found Tenochtitlan is relayed to us by an Aztec myth,its beginning is found in ancient times, when a humble tribe was banished by the original Aztecs (Castillo 1908) from a mysterious homeland it called Aztlan(place of the herons) or Chicomoztoc(place of the seven caves). During the long exile the Mexicas wandered among hostile strangers while anxiously searching for the divine sign, whose presence, prophesied by their god, would mark their arrival in the promised land. The tale continues with the discovery of the omen and the subsequent founding of Mexico-Tenochtitlan on the sacred site. (Leon-Portilla 1992) By the fifteenth century Tenochtitlan had become the center of the Aztec world the center of Aztec growth, conquest, and expansion. As early as the sixteenth century Tenochtitlan dominated all other cities in the Central Valley and had reached the height of its power and magnificence (Caso 1958). The center of the Aztec empire was located near the Lerma river which is near the southern part of the Mexican plateau. The plateau is the largest of Mexicos land regions and it is the most varied region consisting of five sections. The Volcanic Axis is located across the southern part of the plateau. Many of the volcanoes are still active. This area receives a lot of rain and the soil is fertile. This area is the main area where corn and beans were grown for the Aztec empire. The Bajio lies north of the volcanic axis and has an average elevation of 7,000 feet. This region houses the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. Here there is very little rain and thus the region is very dry. The Mesa del Norte area makes up for more then half of the plateau and has an average elevation of 9,000 feet. Since it is so high crops are always in danger of freezing. The Sierra Madre Occidental is a long mountain range that forms the western ridge of the plateau. It remained a barrier for the Aztecs and their enemies. Some of this region still has not been explored by people. The Sierra Madre Oriental is the plateaus eastern rim. The Aztecs had no use for this area but today there is a major coal and old industry in the area (Aschmann 1985). The average January temperatures of the plateau is from 10 to 15 degrees Centigrade while in July the average temperature is around 20 to 25 degrees centigrade. Thus the weather is much like B.C. Average precipitation is from 30 50 cm at the Aztec capital to less than 30 in the highlands. The central part of life for any Aztec citizen, man or woman, was religion. For example, if a baby was to become a priest, immediately after birth it was painted in black and a beaded necklace placed about its neck, and certain rites were conducted. The necklace was then removed and placed in a temple until the child came of age, when the child would then proceed in some type of ecclesiastical training. It was never doubted the child would become a priest; the Aztecs believed that the childs soul was caught in the beads, and that the soul would draw the child to the temple inexorably without regard to the will of the child. Similarly, if a child was to become a great warrior, it was decided at birth and similar ceremonies were carried out. Interestingly, these decisions about a childs future were made by the parents soon after birth. Therefore, from the moment a child was brought into the world she was surrounded by religion. The religion of the Aztecs was a complex one, but is generally characterized as polytheistic, based on the worship of a multitude of personal gods. It is interesting that the Aztecs attempted to incorporate the gods of conquered people into their religion; this was accomplished by considering the conquered peoples gods simply as manifestations of the gods they already worshipped. Similarly, often in the lower Aztec classes people would create whole gods out of what was generally considered only a manifestation of an attribute of a single god (Caso 6-9).There is a dual creative principle found throughout the Aztec culture, split not surprisingly between the masculine and the feminine. This dual creative principle was expressed in the form of two gods, Ometecuhtli, two lord, and Omecihuatl, two lady. Both resided in Omeyocan, meaning the place two (Caso 9). Aztec gods were created when Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl had four sons, to whom they entrusted the creation of the other gods, the world, and man. The sons were named Red Tezcatlipoca, also called Xipe or Camaxtle; Black Tezcatlipoca, commonly called Tezcatlipoca; Quetzlcoatl, the god of wind and life; and Huitzilopochtli, the Blue Tezcatlipoca. It is surmised that in ancient times Quetzlcoatl was replaced by a White Tezcatlipoca (Moctezuma 1988). One of the fundamental concepts in the Aztec religion was the grouping of all beings according to the four compass directions and the central direction of up and down. Ometecuhtli (heaven) and Omecihuatl (earth) represented the central direction of up and down; this symbolizes the heavens and the earth. Their four sons were each associated with a different color and a different compass point. Black Tezcatlipoca was associated with the North, Blue Tezcatlipoca with the South, Red Tezcatlipoca with the East, and Quetzlcoatl with the West. Animals, trees, days, and also men and women were grouped in this manner. Men, according to the day on which they were born, belonged to one of the four regions of the world.Aztec mythology states that the world has been created several times, and eventually each creation is followed by a cataclysm that has destroyed mankind. This was necessary, they believed, because rarely is anything perfected on the first essay. Thus, they could not have a perfect creation after the first try. There are two Aztec myths that clearly illustrate two main tenets of Aztec culture.The first myth centers on Quetzlcoatl. The myth says that if man was to live, he must reciprocate by offering his own blood in sacrifice. This is because man came about from Quetzcoatl making a sacrifice. Sacrifice was essential in Aztec religion, for if no man could exist except through the creative force of the gods, the gods in turn need man to sustain them with human sacrifice.The second myth helps explain the warlike tendencies of the Aztecs. As explained by Caso, according to legend, Coatlicue, the old goddess of the earth, became a priestess in the temple living a life of chastity after having given birth to the moon and stars. One day when she was sweeping, Coatlicue came across a ball of down which she tucked into her waistband. When she finished sweeping, she looked for the ball of down but realized it was gone and that she was pregnant. When her children Coyolxauhqui, the moon, and Centzonhuitznahuac, the stars, discovered this they became angry and decided to kill their mother. Coatlicue wept over her impending death, but the presence in her womb consoled her. When Coyolxauhqui and Centzonhuitznahuac came to slay her, Huitzilopochtli was born, and with the aid of the serpent of fire(suns rays) he cut off Coyolxauhquis head and sent Centzonhuitznahuac fleeing. Thus, when Huitzilopochtli was born he had to do combat with his brothers the stars and his sister the moon; armed with the serpent of fire he drove them away, his victory signifying a new a new day of life for men. When Huitzilopochtli consummated his victory, he was carried across the sky on a litter by the spirits of warriors who have died either in combat or on the sacrificial stone. Later, in the early afternoon, Huitzilopochtli was picked up by the spirits of women who perished in childbirth. They then lead the sun to its setting. Each day this divine combat is begun anew, and thus Huitzilopochtli must be strong if he is to defeat all of this brothers with only his arrows of light. To accomplish this task, Huitzilopochtli must be strong, nourished by human blood. Huitzilopochtli is a god, and disdains the coarse food of humans; he desires chalchihuatl, the precious liquid. Thus the Aztecs, the people of Huitzilopochtli, are charged with the duty of supplying him with food. Thus, for the Aztecs, war was an integral part of their diurnal routine. War became almost a from of worship of Huitzilopochtli. Their belief that Huitzilopochtli depended on them for chalchihuatl led the Aztecs to establish the Xochiyaoyotl, or flowery war. The sole purpose of the Xochiyaoyotl was to take prisoners to sacrifice to the sun. Therefore, each Aztec god required his own sacrifices. This led to an unusual culture: one refined, yet with an accepted level of brutality that is still unsurpassed. The Aztecs conducted an interesting ceremony called Toxcatl in the sixth month. A young warrior, most likely captured through Xochiyaoyotl, was selected for his godlike qualities: smooth skin, good looks, and poise among others. He was then trained for an entire year in how to conduct himself as a personage of the court. He was taught how to play clay pipes, and was given an entourage to attend to him as though he were a lord. Dressed in the attire of the gods, this impersonator of Tezcatlipoca would stroll the streets smoking fine tobacco from gilded reed pipes carrying a bouquet of flowers. Any citizens who met him on the street held him in as high of an esteem as the king himself. Twenty days before the celebration of the festival, his dress was changed to that of a great captain. He was married to four young maidens, incarnations of the wives of the god of providence: Xochiqutzal, Xilonen, Atlatonan, and Huixtocihuatl. When the day of the festival finally came, banquets, ceremonies, and dances were held in honor of the youth. .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef , .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef .postImageUrl , .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef , .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef:hover , .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef:visited , .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef:active { border:0!important; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef:active , .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u3eba1669b58c49dba735f6f27d2f87ef:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: The Second Battle of Bull Run Essay The entire population praised him, commoners and nobles alike. Suddenly, he was taken with his wives and court to a small, neglected temple on the shore of a lake. Here, his wives and entourage left him. Left with but a few pages and his clay pipes, he was escorted to the base of the temple. Here, even the pages left him. He ascended the temple steps alone. On each of the steps, he broke one of his flutes, symbolizing his passed grandeur. Finally, atop the temple he was seized by four priests and stripped of his remaining finery. Each of his arms and legs was seized by a priest, and the young man was stretched atop an altar resembling a flattened cylinder, with his chest thrust high in the air. A fifth priest, in a plunging motion, thrust an obsidian knife into the young mans chest. The priest then reached in through the wound and tore out the young mans heart. Toxcatl had a moral: it was to instruct people that those who enjoy wealth and pleasures in this life will end in poverty and sorrow (Caso 69). Toxcatl is just one example of Aztec sacrifice. Captured warriors were painted with red and white stripes, in imitation of the astral gods, and sacrificed in the same way. The emptied corpses were then taken to the captors houses for dismemberment and distribution: flesh scraped from the skulls and thighbones; fragments of flesh cooked and eaten; human skins, dripping with grease and blood, stretched over living flesh; clots of blood scooped up to smear the temple walls (Clendinnen 261). For the Aztecs, however, these were more than just grotesque rituals. The flesh was eaten atop whole dried maize kernels; to them, the flesh but was a different form of matter in the vegetable cycle (Clendinnen 209). To the Aztecs, the victims were the incarnation of the god whose attire they wore; thus, the eating of the flesh was a most sacred communion (Caso 75). The skins of the victims were often worn until decomposition occurred; the removal of the skin was a happy event. This served to remind the Aztecs of the bitterness of the experience of death. In general, however, human skins were worn to this extreme only after one occasion: The Feast of the Flaying of Men. Other sacrificial methods were practiced as well: some men were tethered to a framework and riddled with arrow until they no longer could stand; some men were burned in sacrifices to the gods of fire; some men were flayed alive and the priest dressed in his skin; some men were decapitated; and some fought in gladiator matches. In these matches, the prisoner was bound and armed with a wooden sword, its usual blades of obsidian replaced with feathers. The prisoner was also given four cudgels of pine. Four expert Aztec warriors, two each from the Jaguar and Eagle clans, would come fight the prisoner one at a time. Should these four fail to vanquish their foe, a fifth man was brought out, always left-handed and thus extremely powerful to slay the prisoner. This cycle continued until the prisoner was finally exterminated (Bray 1968).To the Aztecs family was very important. The family was an important part of survival. The man was a house builder and a farmer or craftsman while the woman prepared food, cared for the children, made clothes, and looked after the livestock. Aztecs thought that marriage without children was incomplete and thus barren women were looked down upon and scorned. The aims of an average Aztec was to have a respected position in the community, a happy family life, and a marriage with children. The birth of a child was an important event. Every important event was always accompanied with speeches in Aztec life. As soon as the baby was born, the midwife would give the baby a speech while she cut the umbilical cord. In the speech she explained to the baby what its duties would be in life. If the infant was a boy he would be told that he would be a warrior whose mission was to feed the Sun with the blood of enemies and if the infant was a girl she was to spend her days doing household chores and help the family. In about four days the father would call an astrologer to read the childs horoscope and determine the appropriate day for the naming ceremony. After a naming ceremony, the name was announced and the news was spread by little boys who ran through the streets shouting. Each child had a calendrical name taken from the day of birth and also a personal name which belonged to him alone(Bray 1969). Education was considered extremely important. Even from an infant to age four the child was taught with quite words. At age four, practical instruction was given under the watchful eyes of the elders. For example the child was taught all the words of the things he would carry in a basket. He would learn to carry things for his mother and go with his father to the local markets. For girls education was really training for marriage. She would be shown how to make thread and use it. At age 14 she would learn to weave a loom. She was also thought how to make cloth to support the family. Self control and obedience was taught at home and punishments were severe.Boys were beaten, pricked with maguey spines, then tied hand and foot and laid naked on the wet ground for a whole day, or else were held over a fire of chili peppers and made to inhale the bitter smoke. Girls were too pricked or held over the fire, being forced to rise before dawn and to spend the whole day cleaning the home and sweeping the street outside (Bray 1968). In many other ways children were made to feel inferior. A rulers daughter was made to walk around and never look up from the ground. She was to never talk while eating and must keep absolute silence. Maidens could not go outside the house without guards. Young unmarried women could never see their father without permission and every time the saw him they would give him presents and gifts they had made. None laughed in his presence and all acted very soberly and modestly(Bray 1969).The choice of who to marry was left up to the man alone. Women had no choice of who they could marry. The two families would arrange and organize the marriage ceremony. The man who was going to get married was released from school and the school gave him many gifts. Now the young youth was considered a man. The girl who was usually 16, spent most of her time in preparing food for the big event. Marriage ceremonies were held in a house during the night with many people present (usually about 150). The marriage rite took place and the couple were perfumed with incense and were then presented with traditional gifts. Then they were joined by a match-maker by the young mans cloak and then they were man and wife. The party continued until the young people were tired and the old people were drunk. Then on the fifth day after the marriage ceremony, there was another party in celebration of the married couple (Bray 1969). Polygamy was very common among the Aztecs. This was very important in the survival of the nation because so many males were killed in wars and in sacrifices. Also alliances were made in this way for diplomatic reasons. If you committed adultery the punishment was death by stoning or strangulation. The person accused had the choice between the two types of punishment. The social structure of the Aztecs is very interesting. A person called the Great Speaker was the supreme ruler. The son of the Great Speaker not always was the heir. It was a Council of Wise Men- very similar to the Roman Senate- that decided in a democratic way who would be the next ruler of Tenochtitlan. In a way, the election of the Great Speaker was very similar to the election of the Byzantine Emperor (coincidentally, these two cultures are contemporary, the Byzantine ending years before the discovery of America). Once the Great Speaker was elected, he was obeyed in everything, since he was the represented of the god Huitzilopochtli on the Earth. The Great Speaker was also head of the government, and the main priest of the Great Temple. This curious selection process is due, according to several investigators basing themselves in legends and Aztec tales, to the fact that the first Aztec Ruler Acamapichtli (1376), had for a main wife a woman called Ilancueitl, daughter of the lord of a nearby town. This girl was sterile, which caused that the Aztec Lords offered their daughters to him and he also took his women slaves as companions. Logically, this caused that more than one resulted pregnant of the Aztec King and each one claimed the right of carrying the future heir in their wombs. When the majority of the sons of Acamapichtli were old enough, the Emperor ordered a group of priests and great warriors to gather to decide who would the next Great Speaker be. This originated the birth of the Council of Wise Men, whose members would be the greatest warriors and the wisest priests. Their selection was also democratic since these were also elected by their own Calpullis we will talk about these later -. This selection process lasted all the time the Aztec Empire lasted. This way never did a dynasty exist (sometimes the Great Speaker was a close relative of the one before, as Moctezuma was Ahuizotls nephew) of Aztec families, preventing with this the aging of the civilization, just like it happened with the Czars in Russia and the kings in France. The heart of the Mexica Empire was the Calpulli. Even before the empire existed, the Calpulli existed already. This was generally formed by relatives or people of the same profession, in this manner there were Calpullis for priests, warriors, carpenters, clay workers, etc. .. Each Calpulli was a form of autonomous government, with its own Speaker or governor, who was elected by the oldest men living in the Calpulli. Just to give us an idea, we will say that each Calpulli had its own school, its own temple, and if the Calpulli was important sometimes it had its own garrison. In the Aztec society there were no closed societies. Anyone could get to be a member of the Council of Wise Men. Though, only the men belonging to the nobility could be Great Speakers. There is an Aztec story that narrates how a Tlaxcalteca, Najahuatzin- called the same way as the god who gave life to the Fifth Sun-, was caught by Moctezuma stealing wood from his private forest. When Nanahuatzin answered honestly, Moctezuma awarded him by naming him Main Voice. This story shows how even the poorest people could reach the highest levels in the Aztec society. This was the reason why the Aztecs were able to control and dominate the largest empire in all of North America and one of the largest worldwide. An Aztec custom consisted in that the Great Speaker, once elected, was no longer human and was a god from then on. In fact, each Aztec Great Speaker was worshiped in the Temple Mayor. The Aztec protocol was that nobody could look directly to the emperor, nor talk or hear him. That is why there was a spokesman who relayed what his lord had said to the subjects and what these would respond to the emperor. Though, in cases of emergency, the king talked directly to his Council (Leon-Portilla 1992, Hassig 1988). The Aztecs main food was corn. The corn was generally ground into flour and then made into masa or dough, which they made into tortillas, drinks, tamales, among other foods. Other foods in the Aztecs diet were the seeds from the sage plant which were used as cereal; spicy peppers, eggs, turkey, rabbit, dog, lizards, locusts, snails, fish eggs, and as a delicacy, green slime which was scooped off the top of lake Texcoco. That was said to taste like cheese. For drink the Aztecs usually drank water and on special occasions they drank beer and nobles drank chocolate sweetened with honey. Foods today in Mexico have some basic components of the Aztec fare such as corn, which is still at the heart of the meal. That is, today corn products are still widely eaten. This can be seen in the tortilla, a round flat sheet of corn that you find in almost every meal in a present day Mexican table; or the tamale, a lump of corn masa containing meat, wrapped in corn husks, and steamed. Both are Aztec foods. Hence, the blend of the Aztec and Spanish cultures can be seen very clearly in food. For instance, it is a common rural Mexican tradition to make tamales, an Aztec food for Christmas, a Catholic holiday. Another example is the fact that tamales are often filled with beef, a product unknown to the Aztecs until the arrival of the Spanish. Even the method in which the meals were prepared: the corn is ground on a metate, made into masa, which is rolled into a ball and flattened, then placed on a comal cooking sheet and cooked, is still being practiced in remote country locations. In the city people eat much as they do here in the United States (Baumann 1995. And Nicholson 1985). Cultivating the soil was the main way of life. .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 , .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 .postImageUrl , .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 , .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636:hover , .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636:visited , .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636:active { border:0!important; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636:active , .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636 .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .uc67c0d5c1eb06b3666945b7e74a3d636:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Instant global radio, or Web radio, is the latest Essay In the Aztec society farmers were generally field workers who prepared the earth, breaking up clumps, hoeing with the coa digging stick, leveling, planting, weeding, and irrigating. They understood the rotations and had to read almanacs so they could determine when it was time for planting. They made the construction of canals to bring water from mountain springS to the towns and fields of the piedmont and foothills. Calculations have shown that the flow of water through this system was insufficient to have maintained farming throughout the year (Bray 1968). The amount of decoration on a garment indicated wealth and social rank of the wearer. Rich people had clothes made of cotton while poorer people had clothes made from maguey fibers. Aztec men wore a cloth around their hips and a cloak that was knotted around one shoulder. The women wore a sleeveless blouse and a wraparound skirt. The amount of decoration around the garment indicated the wealth and social rank of the wearer.Most of the Aztec homes were simple and designed for usefulness rather than for looks. In the upper mountain regions the houses were adobe but in the lowlands they had thatched roofs and walls made of branches and leaves. Usually in the same yard around the house a family had other buildings suck as a place to put their tools and a place for their animals. Wealthy Aztecs had large adobe or stone houses with a large patio built around the house. The yard was usually large and the servants were housed in a separate building (Weaver, 1972). The art of speaking was interwoven with teaching, as the learning of technical skills. Historical accounts, the reciting of stories and poetry, the conduct of law suits, and matters of trade were conducted orally. To be educated was to be a master of oral expression, for people were expected to present artful speeches on all sorts of occasions, both public and private. With all the etiquette required by the highest formalized pattern of Aztec life. Aztec hieroglyphic writing served to communicate names, places, dates, and tallies in association by a system of dots. The language spoken by the Aztecs was called Nahuatl. This language was one of the must popular ones before the Spanish Conquest because it was the spoken language of the most important race in the prehispanic world: the Mexica or Azteca. Some of the peculiar characteristics of this language, was that it had 23 different sounds: 5 vowels and 18 consonants, divided into 9 primaries and 9 secondaries. For some strange reason our ancestry of the Aztec basically used only the 9 primary consonants, that were considered as sacred sounds; The other 9 secondary consonants appeared only in the regular language of this Mexicatl country (the country around the Aztec empire). An example of this is the poetry Nezahualcoyotl lord and philosopher of Texcoco. The Nahuatl alphabet is described briefly below.The Aztec have always been warriors, since their time as the Mexica to the time of their demise. The Aztecs at first were known as dirty barbarians so they were not allowed to settle with the present tribes of Central Mexico. Why did the Aztecs need to have a great military? To answer this question you must understand Aztec religion and way of life. The Aztecs whole beginning is based on war and their main god Huitlilopochi was based on war. The Aztecs had no head army or standing army but it was organized for war. War was used to capture prisoners for sacrifice, punish tributary tribes, and gain new territory. The soldiers were trained at a young age by nobles in special schools. In these schools they taught the warriors their goals in war. The goals were to capture prisoners for sacrifice, and depending on the amount captured gave that warrior prowess. Failure in battle was a disgrace for those who could not accomplish their task and usually led to their sacrifice. The overview of the Aztec military, is that their is no separation of armies, but the whole empire was set on war. The military had specific goals, but if not accomplished meant shame and death. The Aztecs had a very powerful military and only lost to the Spanish due to the myth that the white people were gods (Bray 1968).Agriculture formed the backbone of the Aztec economy. Corn was the most important crop alone with beans, avocados, squashes, potatoes, and tomatoes. The lowlands provided crops such as cotton, papayas, rubber, and cacao. The main agricultural tool was a pointed stick which was used for digging. In the tropical jungle the Aztecs used the slash and burn agriculture which is still used today. They chopped down the trees and burns them along with the shrubs and the ashes fertilized the soil. Terraces were cut in the mountains up in the highlands to increase the amount of farmland. Huge irrigation systems were made and the farmers used the mud from the bottom of the irrigation systems to help their crops. As a result the Aztecs yielded huge crops which is the main reason why their civilization was so successful (Hodge Smith 1994). The market place was one of the main centers of Aztec life. The market at Tlatelolco was the largest in the Americas. Hernando Cortes said that as much as 60,000 people visited the market in a single day. Here every kind of merchandise was bought and sold. The Aztecs had no money as we know it but it was goods and services that were traded. It was found that some Aztecs used cacao beans as a form of money (Hodge Smith 1994). The Aztecs invented the wheel but they never used it in any form of transportation. The wheels were just used in toys. The Aztecs carried all goods on their backs our using animals to carry them (Nicholson 1985). We still know very little about the Aztecs. Research is always uncovering new ideas and data giving us new insights into the Aztec culture and way of life. It is interesting how a people so far away from the known civilization at that time developed a political and economic system similar to the system used in Europe and Asia. The Aztec society was a brutal one yet it was one of the most successful societies in Central America until the intrusion of the Spanish in 1519. Their successfulness was can from their religion which demanded that the Aztecs to always be dominant, brutal adversaries. Even though their religion was the dominant theme in setting the Aztecs apart from other civilizations, they were also unique in their history, economy, environment, and way of life. In studying the Aztecs, we are in a way actually studying ourselves and human history. Only by studying ourselves are we able to overcome our mistakes and make this world a better place. font size=3References:Aschmann, Homer. Mexico World Book Encyclopedia. 1985 ed.Baumann, Adria. The Food of the Aztecs 24 June, 1995. Available : a href=http://www.corona.bell. k12.ca.us/student/adria/7.htmlhttp://www. corona.bell.k12.ca. us/student/adria/7.htmlBrundage, Burr Cartwright. The Fifth Sun: Aztec Gods, Aztec World. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. Burland, Cottie and Wermer Forman. The Aztecs: Gods and Fate in Ancient Mexico. New York: Galahad Books, 1980.Bray, Warwick. Everyday Life of The Aztecs. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1968. Caso, Alfonso. The Aztecs People of the Sun. Trans. Lowell Dunham. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958.del Castillo, Bernal Diaz. Discovery and Conquest of Mexico. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1956. Clendinnen, Inga. Aztecs an interpretation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.Ferguson, William. Arthur H. Rohn. Mesoamerica Ancient Cities. Niwot: University Press Colorado, 1990. Hassig, Ross. Aztec Warfare Imperial Expansion and Political Control. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.Hodge, Mary. and Michael E Smith. Economies and Polities in the Aztec Realm. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1994.Leon-Portilla, Miguel. The Aztec Image of Self and Society. Ed. J. Jorge Klow de Alva. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992.Moctezuma, Eduardo Matos. The Great Temple of the Aztecs. Trans. Doris Heyden. New York: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1988.Nicholson, H. B. Aztec World Book Encyclopaedia. 1985 ed.Shepperd, Donna Walsh. The Aztecs. New York: F. Watts, 1992. Stuart, Gene S. The Mighty Aztecs. Washington: National Geographic, 1981. Weaver, Muriel Porter. The Aztecs, Maya, and Their Predecessors Archeology of Mesoamerica. New York: Seminar Press, 1972.Wolf, Leo. The Aztecs: A tradition of Religious Human Sacrifice. March 28, 1998. Available: ;a href=http://www2.hmcb.edu/sbootnru/aztec.htm;http://www2. hmcb.edu/sbootnru/aztec.htm;font size=3;AppendixThe Gods1. Quetzalcoatl (The Plumed Serpent): John Goss. Patron of wisdom, patron of the priesthood. As Ehecatl, god of the wind; as Tlahuizcalpantechtli, god of Venus as the morning star. As Ce Acatl* (One Reed), a warrior. Special friend and patron of mankind, inventor of writing and the calendar. Reputed to have opposed human sacrifice, but this was likely an invention to please the Catholic priests. 2. Tezcatlipoca (The Smoking Mirror): Herbert North, Jr. Patron of war and warriors, sower of discord, rewarder of the valiant; highly capricious, unpredictable. Often seen as a dual opposite of Quetzalcoatl. He had many synonyms; Itzli (knife), Itzlacoliuhqui (curved flint knife), Yaotl (enemy), and many more. 3. Xipe Totec (Our Lord the Flayed?): David Hallsten. Perhaps the most mysterious of the Teotl; usually assumed to be the patron of springtime and planting, he also probably has sexual/fertility connotations. In the story he is identified as synonymous with the plant god group including Cinteotl (corn god), Xochipilli (Flower Prince) and Macuilxochitl (Five-flower). 4. Tlaloc (Land-lier): Frank Wasserman. The God of Rain, purely and simply. The source of the name is obscure. Always pictured with fangs and eye-rings, he has no common synonyms. 5. Huehueteotl (Old, old God): the Old Man, Old One of the Fire, Eduardo Arias. Also known as Xiuhtecuhtli (Precious Lord), he is the ancient fire god, sometimes identified with the creator-diety Ometeotl (Dual God). 6. Xolotl (Monster): the phantom. Sorceror, dog-face god, twin to Quetzalcoatl; he is identified with Venus as the evening star, and as Quetzalcoatls Nagual. In the story, he is also considered a dualistic twin to Tezcatlipoca. 7. Patecatl (He from the Medicine-Land): Patecatl. Patron of medicines, pulque god. 8. Mixcoatl (Cloud Serpent): Sam Cloud. Patron of hunters, Quetzalcoatls father in his incarnation as Ce Acatl*. 9. Xiuhnel and Mimich (True Turquoise and Arrow Fish): Shownell and Mims. Sacrificial gods, followers of Mixcoatl. 10. Tonatiuh (Heat-giver): Tonatiuh. The sun-god, originally the scabby god Nanahuatzin, who sacrificed himself in fire to become the Fifth Sun. Many authors identify Nanahuatzin with Xolotl, and a few of the old sources say he was Quetzalcoatls son, but these identifications are not used in the stories. His date name is Nahua Ollin* (four movement). 11. Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird From the Left?): Huitzilopochtli. God of War and personal deity of the Aztecs; he was probably unknown before their dynasty began. 12. Mictlantecuhtli (Dead-Land Lord): Mictlantecuhtli. God of the dead, nearly identical to the Roman Pluto. 13. Yohualltecuhtli (Night-Lord): Yohualltecuhlti. Lord of Night, or of the Temple of the Night; usually considered a personification of the night sun, that is, the sun below the horizon. In the stories, he takes Mictlantecuhltis place as the possessor of the bones of mankind. 14. Tecciztecatl (He from the Innermost Twist of the Conch Shell): Tecciztecatl. Lunar deity, personification of the moon; an upstart sun, his face was darkened when a rabbit was thrown into it. The Goddesses: 1. Chalchihuitlicue (Jade Skirts): Evelyn Wasserman. Goddess of terrestrial water, rivers, lakes, oceans. In Tlaxcala, she was called Matlalcueyeh (Green Skirt). Spence identifies her as Chimalma (Shield Hand), the mother of Quetzalcoatl in his incarnation as Ce Acatl*. 2. Xochiquetzal (Flower Feather): Susan Hallsten. Goddess of love, beauty, and flowers. Patroness of marriages and perhaps surprisingly, of prostitutes. 3. Tlazolteotl (Lust-Goddess): Kathryn Phillips. Goddess of sex, with earth and lunar attributes. She was the eater of sins to whom the Aztecs confessed their transgressions. Also known as Toci (grandmother), Teteo Innan (mother of the gods), Ixcuina (Four-face), and many other names. She was consistently seen as the mother of Cinteotl, the corn god. 4. Mayauel (translation ?): Mayauel. Goddess of the Maguey (Agave americana), pulque, and all intoxicants thereby. Original bringer of love to mankind (with Quetzalcoatl). 5. Xilonen (Young corn mother): Xilonen. Corn goddess, in her aspect as the young and tender corn; as adult, she was known as Chicomecoatl* (Seven serpent) or as Chalchiuhcihuatl (Precious Woman). In old age, as Ilamatecuhtli (Old Princess). Female sacrifices in old Mexico were often called Xilonen. 6. Cihuacoatl (Snake Woman): Cihuacoatl, Selinde Llorona. Earth mother, variously identified with Coaticue (Serpent Skirt), Tonantzin (Our Mother), and very possibly with the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose shrine stands on the ancient ground sacred to Tonantzin. Some writers say she is to be identified as Toci and Teteo Innan (see Tlazolteotl, above). She is also Quilaztli, who with Quetzalcoatl formed the new men and women after the birth of the Fifth Sun. 7. Itzpapalotl (Obsidian Butterfly): Liz Cloud. Chichimec goddess (the Chichimecs where the hunting tribes ancestral to the Aztecs and probably to the Toltecs), with fire, celestial, and definitely hunting aspects. 8. Mictlancihuatl (Dead-land Woman): Mictlancihuatl. Goddess of the dead, wife of Mictlantecuhtli. 9. Tzitzimitl (Air Demon): Tzitzimitl. Celestial demon goddess, whose origin was in the stars; a peculiar goddess of inertia, the only Aztec deity lacking a beneficent aspect. She is either multiple in or has minions known as Tzitzimeme, who are prevented by an ancient spell of Tlazolteotls from devouring mankind; they are still percieved as dangerous during eclipses.