Perseus and the Gorgon Assignment

Greg Warman

11-28-12

Eng 1510

Perseus and the Gorgon

            The story of Medusa becoming such a foul gorgon shows the dominance of males and male like people, like Athena.  Though Medusa was the victim of rape, at that point in time, men were considered to be so much better than woman that it didn’t matter. Even more so, the man who raped Medusa was not a man at all, but a god.  A god could do no wrong, so Athena graced him as doing nothing wrong but Medusa as the one who should be punished.  Once Medusa was turned into a gorgon, her powers were viewed as evil because not many women had power, and when they did, it was a rare sight and was often feared by men. The story of Perseus coming and finally killing Medusa shows that men are still the more powerful of the two genders.

            Myth is a construct, created for the purpose of explaining the unexplainable back in older times and to depict morals, values, and how people should act.  Now, we can explain things with science and it’s understood under our system of law how people should act and treat each other. There is no need for myths to be used for the same person as they used to be used, but now, they are used for us to see how mythology affected the lives of people back in the time that the mythology was created and used.