Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Document Type

Poster

Publication Date

Spring 5-1-2024

Faculty Advisor(s)

Dr. Julye Bidmead

Abstract

It is known that the creation of Gods is prevalent, and almost essential to worldbuilding in fantasy novels. Some examples are the dwarves' Durin in Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings and Djel of the Fjerdans in Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse novels. However, there is one popular god present in many modern fantasy series; the God of fate. In Ancient Mesopotamia, a God of fate was named Enlil. Enlil is known as the king of all Gods, as well as the God of wind and air. He decrees the fates and his word cannot be changed, as Enlil guards the tablets of destinies. Specifically focusing on Enlil's role as the God of fate, we seek to analyze the changing of morals and evolution of our society through the differences to Enlil in similar beings of destiny in the popular Sarah J Maas fantasy series, A Court of Thorns and Roses and Crescent City. These beings are the Mother and her Cauldron and the Goddess Urd, respectively. With this information and evidence of Enlil's role in Mesopotamian lore and society, we will compare him to these deities of fate. These evolved portrayals of fate convey women and objects as personifications of the force rather than all-powerful deities whose command cannot be altered. Through this comparison to the ancient god Enlil, we find that our society has moved away from the traditional gender roles of all-powerful men who rule over all versus motherly and weak women.

Comments

Presented at the Spring 2024 Student Scholar Symposium at Chapman University.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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