the wrath of the sun god

I was at Big Sky on Saturday enjoying the nice weather and the festivities of the pond skim. It was a great day of fun in the sun and a bluebird day of shredding with good friends. However, I came out of it with some terrible sun burns. I guess this is the Sun gods way of reminding me of his presence and his power. I suppose when you don't think of him and respect him, he will let you know. I can't put on a shirt or pants, or move for that matter, without being reminded of his power. You think I would have learned my lesson by getting burnt in the past, but no. Like a smart individual, I only put on sunscreen once very lightly in the morning. It turns out falling on snow scrapes all of the sunscreen off. Therefore, I have a semi-blotchy, terrible sunburn. For the rest of the summer, I will always remember to respect the Sun god and put on sunscreen. I just hope he doesn't give me the ultimate punishment for not thinking of him and respecting him.... skin cancer.

Here is a photo of me doing the pond skim, pretty much everywhere you see skin is now a royally painful sunburn. Respect will forever be given to the Sun god.

127 hours

I watched 127 hours last night. I had seen it before, but this time I watched it differently. I payed more attention to the journey of the hero. Somebody in our class had presented on this already, and it made me think more about it while watching the movie. Although Aron Ralston has his external trials of getting free from the rock and conserving water, his toughest trial, in my opinion, is his internal trial of staying calm. There is a point in the movie where he says to himself, "Don't lose it Aron, don't lose it." I think this is the toughest and most important trial for him. If he was not able to keep it together, he would not have lasted near as long as he did. By staying calm, he was able to make logical, reasonable decisions pertaining to his water conservation, hooking up his harness to sit in, etc. (basically his other trials).
This movie hits close to home for me in a way because I am similar to Aron, i like to go play in the outdoors and have crazy, sometimes reckless, adventures. My mom realizes this too, and right after she saw this movie she called me to make sure I was safe and that I always let her know what I am up to. I think this is his boon as a cultural hero. The culture he is a hero for is the culture of adventurers and outdoorsman. It shows us that you should always let people know where you are at, that way this situation never happens to you. You have to be smart, reasonable, and able to rely on others. Being too independent could put you "between a rock and a hard place."

How to Train Your Dragon

I am presenting my final presentation tomorrow. My topic is the Journey of the Hero of Hiccup from the Disney movie How to Train your Dragon. I thought I would post my paper in case anyone wanted to read it. This can get your thought showers started and you can all show up with interesting ideas and questions for me!

Hiccup the Anti-Dragon Slayer

            In the Disney Pixar movie How to Train Your Dragon, the journey of the hero can be followed with an unsuspecting character named Hiccup. Hiccup is not like the rest of the Vikings in Berk. He is small and scrawny whereas the other Vikings are all big-boned and beefy. The whole village notices Hiccups differences, and he is the laughing stock of the whole village. Another fact that doesn’t help is that Hiccups father, Stoic the Vast, is the head of the village, and the ultimate Viking. The only way for Hiccup to clear his name and become a true Viking is to kill one of the dragons that terrorize their Viking village. What better way to give himself a name than to kill the infamous Night Fury?

            Hiccup is set apart as the hero of the story right off the bat. Not only is he physically different than the rest of his fellow Vikings, but he seems to be more intellectual as well. He is compensates for his lack of strength with crafty gadgets and machines like the thrower he created that helped him take down the Night Fury. Because of this, Hiccup’s father, Stoic, does not like his son. Being the supreme Viking, he is ashamed of his small, worthless Viking son. There is a great quote where Hiccup mocks his dad by saying, “Excuse me barmaid, I think you brought me the wrong offspring. I ordered an extra-large boy with beefy arms, extra guts and glory on the side. This here, this is a talking fish bone.” Hiccup’s upbringing fits with the general paradigm of the hero outlined by Taylor, Rank, and Campbell. This paradigm states that there are three things that define a hero. First, the hero is exposed at birth and its parents don’t care for it. Hiccup has been exposed to the Viking way of life, fighting dragons, since birth. His father doesn’t care for his existence, and Hiccup, therefore, raises himself in his own unique way. This matches the second part of the hero paradigm where the hero is raised by other things, such as animals. Hiccup does things in his own way, and his mentor, Gobber, seems to take Hiccup under his arm and raise him. Gobber is not an animal, but he is definitely less human than the rest of the Vikings. He has a wooden leg and an interchangeable, fake, arm. The third part of the hero paradigm is that the hero will return as a cultural hero for their society. As will be shown in this paper, Hiccup turns out to be the cultural hero for more than just the Vikings.

            On Hiccup’s departure, he takes on the biggest challenge he can think of. That is, taking down and killing a Night Fury, a task that has never been completed. When Hiccup has the chance to kill the dragon, he refuses and frees the beast instead. In return, the dragon let Hiccup go. This is the first threshold in Hiccup’s journey as the hero. A threshold is identified by sleep or death or crossing from one world to another. Hiccup passed out from the fear and relief of being spared by the dragon. This is the start to him understanding a whole new world about the dragons. His experience contradicted the previous knowledge in the Viking world, and that is “a dragon will always go for the kill”.

            Unfortunately, right after finding out he does not have it in him to kill a dragon, Hiccup finds himself in the belly of the whale, or the dragon-training cage, the very next morning. The belly of the whale is symbolized by a metaphorical death/or night. With its enclosed structure, the dragon-training cage represents a belly, and when Hiccup is in the cage, he is fighting for his life against dragons. From here, Hiccup goes on two different initiation stages in his journey of the hero. There are two worlds, the cultural, or Viking, world, and the natural, or dragon, world. Hiccup will be responsible for bringing these two worlds together. Each world has its own road of trials. He has the trials presented to him in dragon training and the trials of trying to understand and ride his new pet dragon, Toothless. Hiccup takes the tricks he learns with Toothless, like the fact that dragons hate eels and love grass, and uses these to help him in dragon training. At the same time, he takes his knowledge from the human world and uses it to fix Toothless and make him able to fly again.

In the time of the training, Hiccup has learned that everything previously known about dragons is wrong. He becomes very close to Toothless, and they grow to trust each other and respect each other. Hiccup cares for Toothless like a mother would care for a child. Toothless is injured and cannot fly. Therefore, Hiccup uses his intelligence and cunning to nurse Toothless back to health. This is the meeting with the goddess stage of the journey. It is not represented by a physical goddess, but by the nurturing, mother-like nature that Hiccup treats Toothless with. Hiccup does not only show this caring for Toothless alone. He also brings his ideals of nurturing, and not harming, dragons to the training cage. Astrid is the temptress for Hiccup in this story. She is the best dragon-training recruit, and Hiccup has a big crush on her. She is the first Viking to find out about Toothless. Hiccup shows her his understanding of dragons, and how they are not mean, vile creatures. Astrid eventually comes to be on Hiccup’s side and helps him in the long run.

Just as there are two roads of trials, there are two stages in which Hiccup has atonement with the father. In the cultural world, he has atonement with his own father, Stoic. Stoic hears that Hiccup is doing well in the ring, completely opposite of what was expected. He tries to talk to Hiccup, “With you doing so well in the ring, we finally have something to talk about!” However, Hiccup has a different understanding of dragons, which means that they still do not have any common ground to talk about. In the natural world, the atonement with the father would be Hiccup conquering a higher power, which would be the mighty dragon. He is able to ride the animal, which in a way shows dominance over the dragon.

The apotheosis of the journey is when Hiccup brings the natural and cultural worlds together. This happens when he is supposed to kill his first dragon in front of the entire village. The worlds combine when Toothless comes to save Hiccup. Now all of the Vikings have seen Hiccup and Toothless working together and not harming each other. Hiccup tries to share his new understanding of dragons, and that is that they are not bad and don’t have to be killed. This is an understanding that contradicts years of knowledge in Hiccup’s society. Of course, this does not go over well with the rest of the village. This new knowledge about dragons is the boon for the Vikings, although they don’t understand that yet. The ability to work with dragons and not against them is what ends up freeing the Vikings in the climax of the movie.

The refusal comes when Stoic takes Toothless to find the dragon’s nest. Hiccup will not stand idly by while his village and his best friend go to the death trap. He and his friends from dragon training fly dragons to catch up with the war party. All of the Vikings that are flying dragons are the young kids of the village. This is significant because they are the next generation in the Viking world. They are the first Vikings to accept the boon, or the understanding of working with dragons.  When battling the gigantic “queen-bee” dragon, this knowledge proves to be very useful.

The magic flight is when Hiccup and Toothless make the big queen dragon fly. They bring the battle to the sky where it is just Hiccup, Toothless, and the queen dragon. This is where the bond and understanding between Toothless and Hiccup is put to the test. They use maneuvers that were previously shown in the movie to defeat the queen dragon. The rescue from without comes right after the magic flight. Hiccup is saved by Toothless before they hit the ground.

The rescue from without is followed immediately by Hiccup’s crossing of the second, or return threshold. This happens when Hiccup almost died and gets knocked out. Hiccup wakes up from his coma to an entirely different world. Before he was knocked unconscious, the Vikings and dragons were enemies. After he wakes up, dragons and Vikings are living in harmony in Berk. The other Vikings had finally accepted the boon that Hiccup brought to them. Also, Hiccup is the most respected Viking in the village, whereas before, he was looked down on with distain and disrespect. He is the master of both the dragon and Viking world. He was the first Viking to ride a dragon, and most importantly, he was the one who showed that it was possible to ride a dragon. The freedom to live is the harmony that resulted between the dragons and the Vikings. By defeating the queen dragon, peace was brought to both the dragon and Viking world because the dragons had no more reason to steal from the Vikings. This all resulted because of the knowledge that Hiccup gained by refusing to go with the Viking way and not killing Toothless.

Overall, the Disney movie, How to Train Your Dragon, is a great example of the journey of the hero, as laid out by Campbell. Hiccup departs from the norm of the Viking way of life and refuses to kill a dragon, something the Vikings have been doing for years. He forms a friendship with this dragon, and through this friendship he gains a completely new understanding of his used-to-be enemy. After many hardships, he is able to bring this understanding to Viking world and free both his fellow Vikings and the dragons from the hardships that they have been living for many centuries.