Everybody enjoys a good story. We all have stories to share. Some are made-up fantasies of our creative mind while some are age-old and have been passed from a generation to another. There's something that we learn and take away from each of these stories.
But do we get a say in what it is that we are to learn from these tales, seeing as they are always told in ways that put the story-teller in the best light? There is an African saying, "The tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter until the lion learns to speak".
Let us take the example of an age-old tale, that of Medusa. People know the 'Clash of the Titans' version of the story, where Medusa is on the hunt for the demigod Perseus.
Most of us know the other version which is in wider circulation, in which Medusa starts out as a priestess in the temple of Athena where she gets raped by Poseidon and gets cursed for it by the very goddess she serves. The curse results in her being doomed to live without human contact for eternity. Then she is hunted down by Perseus specifically for her head while she's pregnant with twins, the Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor, from the rape. Perseus would slay Medusa using the mirrored shield given to him by Athena, mount Pegasus, and use him and Medusa's head to kill a sea monster, thus winning him a wife, Andromeda.
In this story, we see Medusa being portrayed as a monster simply for defending her turf from those out to kill her and to get hunted by a demigod who has all the backing and help needed for the job. She is raped, betrayed by her god, hunted down like a beast in her own home while she was pregnant, her own children stolen from her and used to glorify and aide her killers and betrayers.
This story always ends with people praising Perseus for his bravery and for killing a monster who is despised by all. It is unanimously agreed upon that Medusa is the villain of the tale and that she is punished for her crimes. We are never really told about these crimes, seeing as they are non-existent.
But this is just how the Greek men viewed and told the story. There is another side to this myth that never saw the light of day, the side viewed by the Greek women. The Greek women saw Medusa as a victim, not an assailant. They saw Athena's curse as the goddess protecting Medusa by giving her the power to make any man who even looked at her completely harmless.
When Athena aided Perseus in slaying Medusa, it was her freeing Medusa of a life of abuse from people deeming her a monster. Her head was used as a symbol to mark women's shelters in Greece. These women saw the mythical creature in a completely different light and their cultures and lives were affected by that fact. The story remained the same, but because of the way it was told, some celebrated the hero for killing the tyrant while others commemorated the tyrant as a someone who took the fall because of misguided truths.
Not only myths but also history is shrouded with a haze of perception. The white folks back then justified their acts against the blacks as helping them out because they thought that no would want to hire these people and that they would go hungry without work to pay for food. This shows that most of the stories that are preserved today come through a heavy filter of gender, race, and class biases.
We can never really know the whole story, never really know if we covered all bases, learned all the facts. What we can do is keep looking, and stop only when we find a satisfactory answer. Truth is evasive but it eventually does come out, just as long as we don't settle for the illusion. All we must remember is that there is always an untold side of the story and find someone willing to tell it.
