Lindsey Pritchett - Abarat (outside of class reading)

Recently I was reading a book called Abarat, by Clive Barker. It is a fantasy book about a young girl named Candy. She lives in a place called Chickentown. There is this one part of the book where, for history class, she is assigned to go out and learn something about her town that she did not already know. Candy learns aboutthe myth about an old man who killed himself in one of the rooms at the hotel her mother used to work at. When Candy turns in her assignment, she receives an F because a myth is not fact and it has nothing to do with Chickentown. Candy's professor scolds her for believeing that a myth has as much to do with a place as the town's history. The myths are, in fact, what make a place interesting. It adds culture and substance. I found it interesting because we had talked about cultural myths earlier in the semester. How myths affect the way people see the world. Especially the cultural myth I studied. In the Celtic creation myth, it is believed that we came from the earth itself. This has affected the way the Irish live and what they belive today. So, in contradiction to Candy's professor, myths hold a great deal more value than she perceives.