Welcome to my Blog : I am Coyote by Name and Trickster by Trade

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

The Trickster Archetype in the Bible

Let’s look at some trickster characters from way back in the oldest of times – the Old Testament in the Bible. Okay, so it’s pretty clear that Jacob is a tricky guy. He lies, he wiggles, he negotiates… He’s a little bit of a con artist when one thinks about it.

As one looks upon the long-ago story of Jacob in the Old Testament, one might notice that there are many characters in folklore and mythology that seem to fall into the category of ‘tricksters.’ To get up to speed, check out the following:

• A rundown of the trickster character

• Examples of modern trickster characters

So… is Jacob a trickster?

Most scholars would shout a resounding yes! He’s probably the best biblical example of the Trickster archetype. There are, however, some points of difference, so let’s take a look at both sides.

Jacob is a Trickster

Jacob’s scheming to steal the blessing from Esau (Genesis 26-27) is certainly a mischievous act. Jacob routinely confronts God (Genesis 28), and one can even find a scene where he literally wrestles with God (Genesis 32). He’s not tricking God, but neither is he silently assenting.

Jacob is a boundary-crosser: He marries Rachel over Leah, despite Laban’s objections (Genesis 29), he supplants his brother’s blessing (Genesis 26-27), and he is perpetually traveling throughout his Genesis narrative.

Jacob is a supernatural boundary-crosser as well: His dream of a ladder to the stars (Genesis 28) and his wrestling with God (Genesis 32) represent how he is able to go into the realm of divine things, unlike other humans.

Now let’s look at the opposing side.

Jacob is not a Trickster

Classic elements of the trickster, such as sexualization or culture- bringing, are absent from Jacob stories.

Jacob does not shape-shift into an animal, as many other trickster do.

Jacob is cunning, but he is not crude, and isn’t driven by the desire for food and sex, unlike many other tricksters.

According to one of our readings, “tricksters often show up flaws in the big gods,” but this is certainly not the case in Genesis where Jacob’s machinations actually serve to get him approval from the big God.

* A quick rundown of the trickster character: Tricksters are archetypal, almost always male, characters who appear in the myths of many different cultures. As their name suggests, tricksters love to play tricks on other gods (and sometime on humans and animals).

Three other examples of tricksters:

• Jacob in the Twilight series who also shape-shifted into a wolf

• Mystique in X-Men who can turn into anyone as long as she touches them

• Aang in the Avatars series who is gifted with all four elements: water, earth, fire, and air

Aang in the Avatars series who is the protagonist and is called the Avatar. His world is divided into four nations – the Water Tribe, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation and the Air Nomads- each represented by a natural element that flow from the culture. Each nation has the ability to bend to control and to manipulate the elements from their nation. Only Aang the Avatar is the master of all four elements.

~ My Second Blog Post ~

The Matrix

April 4, 2020 The Matrix

What if the very world you lived in were an elaborate lie, a scheme to keep you from the truth of your existence? Welcome to The Truman Show – oh wait, nope… Welcome to The Matrix.

During Spring Break, I came across The Matrix, one of my favorite films. I started thinking of mythology as I took another look at this thrilling science fiction action film from 1999.

Do you want to know why The Matrix is called The Matrix? Well, it’s because the movie centers around a computer-simulated virtual world known as the Matrix in which humans are mentally trapped and placated so that they can be kept alive and produce energy.

Okay, maybe there’s a little bit more to it. I Googled “matrix” and came up with a bunch of definitions that don’t really make sense within the context of the movie. But wait, I think I found something: “a set of numbers arranged in rows and columns to form a rectangular array.” Now we’re getting somewhere. One sees the letters of green cascading code of the operator’s computers through the movie, most obviously when Neo is resurrected and begins to see the matrix itself in its true state. To my surprise, the movie parallels the Bible in the sense that Neo (Keanu Reeves) is in some sense Jesus Christ and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) is the Holy Spirit, and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) is God. I just found this out – I knew I really liked this film! There is a lot of symbolism all through the story. It’s a must-watch! Neo is the trickster because he does so many crazy things: he flies, he brings Trinity back to life, he jumps into another person… Wow!

Neo is just your everyday world-class hacker (hello, the ’90s!) who finds himself mixed up in some shady business. First, a fun little rendezvous with some secret-agent-looking dudes led by Agent Smith, who do some not-so-nice things to him because they want to get to Morpheus. Suddenly he wakes up in a whole new world... with a hovercraft instead of a magic carpet. Finally, though, he meets Morpheus and Trinity. And this is when he learns that his world isn’t exactly what he thought it was. What he’s known as reality his whole life is merely… a computer program.

In any case, he now finds himself aware of the “real world” for the first time.

Unfortunately, the “real world” isn’t doing so well – you can tell when Neo wakes up in a vat with wires coming out of holes he didn’t know he had, surrounded by thousands of other still-sleeping people. But don’t worry: Morph and the gang come to his rescue in their hovercraft (we’re in the far-off future) and fill him in on the “machines have taken over the world and farm humans for energy” story.

They also let him in on the fun factoid that he is The One to save humanity from extinction. 

So… no pressure.

Neo fits the “trickster” bill; he’s a character, and a rebel too. The movie is totally enjoyable and fast-paced – and they are coming out next year with the fourth Matrix film, starring the same people!

~ Welcome to Blog Post #3 ~

Old Granny, self-absorbed, master of mischievously manipulating family members into getting her way, is the trickster in the story A Good Man is Hard to Find.

Deep, Deeper to Grandmother’s Core, she’s a Trickster

Mary Flannery O’Connor’s narrative, A Good Man is Hard to Find, is brilliantly written tale. This story is told in the third-person POV, and begins in media res with the protagonist Grandmother contemplating her desire to go to Tennessee instead of Florida for the family vacation. She’s already in the car, heading for Florida as part of a family of six, arguing with her son, Bailey, a mama’s boy. Also along for the ride are Bailey’s children, John Wesley (eight years-old and undisciplined) and June Star (who speaks her mind in a disrespectful way), a baby, and the children’s unnamed mother. Unknown to Bailey, Grandmother has also smuggled aboard the cat, Pitty Sing, hidden in a basket.

Some may call this short story’s genre “Southern Gothic” while other may call it a “literal fiction,” or a “Christian realist” story. This story calls up a good deal of Southern dialect and the South’s mythic background. It elicits a good degree of pity and terror, despite its way of being serious and comic at the same time. O’Connor’s flair is profound. Within her characters are touches of humor, comedy, dispair, and terror. The reader is pulled into this short story from the very beginning, questioning the characters, becoming emotionally attached, and experiencing the actions and reactions as if the story was happening in real life. With even the unnamed mother and her infant losing their innocence over the course of the story, O’Connor’s characters symbolize the Seven Deadly Sins, with perhaps the deadliest sin – pride – belonging to the grandmother herself.

At the beginning of “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the grandmother is excited about taking a road trip with her family despite her disapproval of the destination, Florida. After all she’s just read about “The Misfit,” a violent criminal who’s escaped prison and also headed toward that very state. On the way, she tries to manipulate Bailey, to force him into going to Tennessee where some of her friends live. This is where you first see the pushy, small-minded, self-righteous grandmother make her failing attempt to maneuver her son. After a horrid lunch stop, where the children show themselves as unforgivably coarse and undisciplined, Grandmother starts spinning a tall tale about an old plantation and whips the kids into a frenzy of whining and pleading. Out of frustration, Bailey agrees to a detour to see this place. Along the way back toward the plantation, grandmother suddenly remembers the plantation is not in Florida but in Tennessee. Startled, she causes Pitty Sing to escape. The cat jumps on Bailey, causing him to crash the car. The family, not badly injured but dazed, are waiting along the road for help. Who is passing by to find the family along the road? “The Misfit” and his men. The strange resolution of this story is when the grandmother tries to help the Misfit – and he kills her without so much as a thought. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a typical Flannery O’Connor story, which means it presents us with a strange morality – one where integrity is found in immoral people and where hypocrisy and moral corruption fester within outwardly “good” people.

O’Connor’s story has several allegorical themes: family, violence and grace, goodness, punishment and forgiveness, family conflict and family love, moral decay, good versus evil, religion, manipulation, society and class, chance, grace, and spiritual blindness. Chance was one of their stumbling blocks: Bailey and Grandmother’s choices set off a chain of events that bring about their demise. Any one of these themes is worth following up, but the greatest of these Grace. God’s grace, always undeserved, falls on Grandmother as she realizes that all humans are part of one family. She calls her killer “family” at the end, and it seems like The Misfit is grandmother’s son in a shocking twist. Her moment of grace is definitely the climax of the story. It’s as though Grandmother triumphs in the end, as she’s miraculously redeemed. As she lifts her arm onto his shoulder and says, “One of my babies!” the Misfit shoots her three times. Strangely, he finds that “it wasn’t all pleasure” as he had said before – he was actually more in tune with his thoughts on God. In this priceless moment Grandmother, who had been looking into the past and only thinking of herself, found her truth in the end. She saw this “misfit” as a fellow human being, someone that the Lord our God loves – and dies with a smile on her face.

~ Greetings friends! Welcome to Blog Post #4 ~

This was a great movie. I liked every bit of it. The idea of a woman who is not a heroine, but not a villain either is very realistic. And the transformation was totally awesome! Her weak, shy girl turning to a strong bad-ass vigilante was purrr-fect!