Hello all,
In “Finding Oannes,” the quest for the missing ship The Oannes, as a sign of intellectual harmony with nature, ultimately serves to highlight the disastrous implications of our faulty relationship with the natural world, as demonstrated by the shipwreck, pointing to a broader reflection on human-nature bonds.
Thesis: The chapter “Freak Shows and Fantasies” from Merpeople: A Human History by Vaughn Scribner explains how mermaids can be interpreted as symbolic representations of genuine human prejudices. This chapter connects the similarities between human prejudices and cultural narratives of mythical creatures shown through different cultures and periods through “Ti Jeanne” and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”. Mythical stories about fantasy creatures such as mermaids offer a paradigm for understanding a culture’s treatment of those deemed “other” and draw parallels for thinking about the mistreatment of human minorities as non-human or less than human.