Behind the Curtain of Great Are the Myths Episode: 8 America as Mythological Landscape

Memphis, Miss Porter’s, Bryn Mawr, New York, Los Angeles, and the DesertOne of the most striking features of Great Are the Myths is that America in the novel is never merely a setting. It functions as a symbolic landscape. Each major location carries its own imaginative and emotional charge, so that geography becomes part of the novel’s deeper meaning.Birdie does not simply move through places. She moves through mythic regions.Memphis, Miss Porter’s School, Bryn Mawr College, New York, Los Angeles, and Palm Springs are not interchangeable backdrops. They function almost as stages in an inner and cultural journey: the place of origin, the place of formation, the place of intellectual awakening, the place of institutional power, the place of dream production, and finally the place of revelation.The novel therefore participates in a long literary tradition in which landscape is not passive scenery but an active force in the making of identity. In Great Are the Myths, America is not simply where the story happens. America is part of what the story is about.