Parallel Myths

Bierlein opens his preface by arguing that myths are everywhere in our daily lives and that by understanding them, we understand ourselves. While popularized in recent literature, film, and television, most scholarship on the subject is not “reader friendly.” Bierlein’s goal is to change that. He includes not only the familiar Greek and Norse myths, but those of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania. The importance of myth, he argues, is to show humanity its commonalities even across what we perceive as wide cultural gaps.

Bierlein opens Part 1 with a poem by 19th-century American lawyer and writer

Robert G. Ingersoll. In his “Invitation to Myth,” Ingersoll lays out a bleak picture of humanity’s existence:

Life is a narrow vale between the cold

And barren peaks of two eternities.

We strive in vain to look beyond the height, We cry aloud;

the only answer

Is the echo of our wailing cry (1).

Humanity’s only recourse in the face of existential despair, Ingersoll argues, is to create myths that give meaning to our lives and give gods “the faults and frailties” of human beings. Myths give not only meaning but beauty to a world that can too often seem cruel and capricious.