Outside Reading 5: Shannon Rose

 Starting off the semester, we watched a movie that emulated Lewis' later years and displayed the amount of suffering he endured throughout his life. After reading over A Grief Observed and The Problem of Pain, I started to wonder if there was a correlation between characteristics of Lewis' mythological works and the suffering that he endured. Considering a topic for my final paper for this class, I automatically thought about Russian mythology. I visited Russia on a missions trip and fell in love with the culture, then applied for a Russian Governor's School at Virginia Commonwealth University and attended in 2011. Learning so much about Russian history and culture, my thoughts about Lewis automatically correlated to Russia. Lewis' suffering could be compared to the suffering that Russian people underwent throughout their harsh history. Lewis' mythological themes could also be compared to some underlying themes in Russian mythology. To fill the criteria for outside reading for this journal, I will give you a sneak peek into my paper and tell you about some of the Russian myths that I have been reading.
This one is actually one of my favorite myths that I learned about at Governor's School. He is a spirit named Banik. Traditionally accepted in Slavic culture as the spirit of the bathhouse, Banik resided and reigned over the bathhouse. I think the most significant characteristic of this spirit is that he has the ability to predict the future and will stroke the back of a person in the bathhouse if the future looks good and will scratch the back if the future looks bad. I have been studying via the Slavic section of the New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. I gained access to excerpts via internet and have a copy being sent from another library through the interlibrary exchange.