It's+a+Long+Story

=It's a Long Story = By Grant L. One of the main reasons that human beings complain is an innate need to prove their superiority to other people. Many arguments have arisen to determine which of a group of people has endured the worst ordeal. At first, such arguments would appear to be purposeless and even have a detrimental effect on others' views of the combatants. However, when one takes into account the desire to establish some degree of dominance over others, the source of the argumentative complaining becomes clear. Unpleasant or difficult experiences that a person has been through serve as a measure of their strength to endure hardship, and the worse the experience the stronger must then be to have endured it. Because people want to prove that they are stronger than other people, they complain, and then argue over the magnitude of their hardships, hoping to assert themselves.

Several characters in the book of Genesis had good reason to complain about their problems, but it is possible that no one experienced more misfortune than Adam and Lot. In this project, a fictional scenario is created in which Adam and Lot hold a discussion about their life experiences and who had the more trouble. The project is comprised of a written script of what their conversation might sound like, and audio recording of that script, and several analyses of the characters as they appear in Genesis, the paintings, and the script. The dialogue was designed to convey two traits evident in each character in selected paintings and Genesis. Included with the project are brief backgrounds on the artists behind the paintings, images of the paintings themselves, the preliminary webspiration flowchart that was created to organize my ideas and evidence, and a reflection discussing the completion of the project and many of its aspects.

=Script =

-creaking gate noise

Adam: Well, welcome to heaven. Let’s see, it’s Lot, right?

Lot: Yeah… say, are you Adam? How are you?

Adam: Not so great, really.

Lot: How come?

Adam: My lot in life just stinks.

Lot: I take that personally. But what’s so bad?

Adam: God kicked me and Eve out of the Garden.

Lot: Of Eden? Is it nice there?

Adam: Yeah, Eden. Don’t make me feel worse.

Lot: Ok sorry. Why were you kicked out?

Adam: Long story.

Lot: Let’s hear it. I’ve got nothing else to do.

Adam: Fine, then. Well, it started when Eve heard about healthy living from someone or other. She got all these new ideas in her head about how we both have to start being all healthy.

Lot: Like how?

Adam: She started making me go for a run around the Garden every morning, and we had whole grain meal for breakfast, and stuff like that.

Lot: And God kicked you out for that?

Adam: Oh, no. See, one day, she meets this snake, who I suspect told her about being healthy, and he shows her to that special tree God said something about, and says, “Here, eat this fruit. It’s healthy. Makes your brain smarter.” So she eats the fruit, and then seeing as it’s all healthful, she brings me one. But I don’t want it, because God said don’t eat that, but did Eve listen? Noooo. Eat this, Eve says. It’s good for you, Eve says. Makes you smarter, Eve says. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, Eve says. What’s an apple, I said. Anyway, I finally ate it,(-crunching of apple sound) because you can’t win an argument with Eve, even if you’re right.

Lot: That’s no reason to be all negative. I mean, yeah, healthy food is boring, but it’s not bad.

Adam: Just wait. After I ate the fruit, Eve said, “You going out like that? Here, put on the fig leaves I got you, or don’t you like them?” So I put on the fig leaves, and next thing I know, God kicks us out.

Lot: That’s why?

Adam: Yeah, I don’t get it either. Maybe God doesn’t like figs. To make things worse, when we got kicked out we went from being immortal to just plain old mortal, even after all that healthfulness.

Lot: You shouldn’t complain. My plight was much worse than that. I mean, Eve’s a pain and all, but at least you have a wife. All I’ve got is a pile of salt.

Adam: Hah. There’s nothing bad about salt. In fact, sometimes I’d rather have salt.

Lot: Well, the salt was my wife, but God turned her into salt because she looked back while we were escaping Sodom. It’s good kosher salt, but still…

Adam: Why were you running from Sodom in the first place?

Lot: Long story.

Adam: Hey, I told you my story.

Lot: Ugh, fine. Ok, here goes. So we were living just happy as can be in Sodom, and the God says, “Lot, you must leave Sodom. It will be destroyed for its wickedness.” Turns out, save my family, there wasn’t a single righteous person in the whole city. Since God told us that we had to flee, we fled, but then God says that we aren’t allowed to look back as we’re fleeing. And as we’re fleeing, God dumps fire and sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah.

-rain and crackling fire noises

Adam: Wait, where’d Gomorrah come in?

Lot: I don’t know. God just threw it in with Sodom, maybe just because he felt like it. While were running away, though, my wife decides to be stupid and looks straight back, and God made her into a pillar of salt.

-salt shaker

Adam: That’s really not so bad, you just complain too much.

Lot: Are you kidding? You try to make living in Eden sound awful, but it’s not! I’m way worse off than you. I’ve got to deal with a pile of salt.

Adam: At least salt doesn’t argue. Eve is much more difficult to deal with than salt.

Lot: But I had to leave Sodom!

Adam: And I had to leave Eden. I had more trouble than you.

Lot: No way.

Adam: Yes.

Lot: No!

Adam: Yes, I did!

Lot: No, I was…wait, why are we arguing? We’re in heaven; both of our problems are gone!

Adam: Say, you’re right.

=Audio Recording = media type="file" key="Genesisproject.mp3" width="335" height="27" align="center" =Analysis =

In the book of Genesis, the character Adam has a highly pessimistic view of his situation, which leads him to act submissively towards others because he believes they are the source of his problems. In Masaccio’s painting of both Adam and Eve, a suggestion of what the two character’s response might have looked like just after having been expelled from Eden by God. While Eve almost appears to be attempting to negotiate with God, Adam simply closes his eyes and places his head in his hands, dwelling on the negative aspects of this punishment. Though he directly blames Eve for the couple’s eviction, saying, “’he woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.’”, (Gen. 3.12) he still readily accepts his punishment. Adam’s lack of resistance both when God forced him and Eve out of the Garden and when Eve offered him the fruit of the forbidden tree mean that he is submissive to others, even when they could cause problems for him. It is possible that Adam submits to what others ask of him so that when his actions on their behalf cause conflict, he has someone to find fault with.

In the brief period where Lot is featured prominently in Genesis, he appears to have a surprising amount of hope and optimism for the future, which makes his current surroundings seem much less desirable by comparison, causing him to complain more than is necessary. In Rubens’ painting, Lot is captured leaving the condemned city of Sodom with his daughters, who look at him somewhat questioningly. Lot returns their gaze with reassurance, and the angle of his head pointed slightly to look skyward in undoubting optimism of what lies ahead. However, Lot’s positive ideas for the future cause him to whine and complain, such as when he balks at God’s sending him to hills so that he might be saved from Sodom’s destruction when he says, “’...[A]nd you have shown me great kindness in saving my life; but I cannot flee to the hills, for fear the disaster will overtake me and I die.’” (Gen. 19.19) While the situations Lot finds himself in all seem incredibly deplorable relative to his overly idealistic hopes, he is not all that unfortunate. Lot may take on an unrealistically optimistic view so as to make his plight seem more pitiable by comparison. By forcing this view on others, he can then justify to himself complaining about his position.

**Adam (Dialogue)**
In the script, Adam's pessimistic and subservient character play an important role in his conversation with Lot, and also feature prominently in the dialogue's background, which each of the characters retells. Through his responses to Lot and commentary on his story, Adam shows to the reader both his negative perspective and submissiveness. Occasionally, Adam is aware of these traits in previous events and discusses them, but often the traits are present in the conversation itself, as when he responds to Lot's cheerful greeting with a glum, "'Not so great, really.'" to describe his current situation, and his lack of resistance to telling his story as compared to Lot, "'Let's hear it. I've [Lot] got nothing else to do. [Adam] Fine, then.'" Adam's submissive behavior is a cause of many of the problems that he relates to Lot and the reader, a fact that he realizes with the aid of hindsight. Adam even comments on his lack of resistance to the will of others when he says, "'...I finally ate it, because you can't win an argument with Eve, even if you're right.'" Adam also notes that Eve is stubborn, and will not admit to being wrong, but fails to realize that though he says that he accepted the apple because he could not win, he made no clear attempt at argument. In this instance, not only is Adam acting submissively towards those around him, but he has such a negative idea of what the outcome of an attempted argument would be. Though he does not acknowledge or even realize it, Adam's pessimism is allowing him to obey the will of others without resistance.

=Webspiration Flowchart =

=Artist Information =

**Masacci[[image:biograph.jpg width="121" height="180" align="right"]]**
[|Masaccio], whose given name was Tommaso Cassai, was born on December 21, 1401. At the age of 21, he joined the painter's guild in his hometown of Florence, Italy. There, Masaccio was influenced by the masters at the time, and developed his skills. Though influenced by Giotto, Brunelleschi, and Donatello, all other artists, though Brunelleschi and Donatello were sculptors. Despite influence by other artists, Masaccio developed his own style. Masaccio's paintings used a combination of geometry, simplification of shapes, and three-dimensionality that make them unique. Not long after joining the guild, Masaccio died in Rome near 1428. He is said to have influenced other artists including Michelangelo, and is considered a part of the Renaissance.

**Rubens[[image:Self-Portrait-small.jpg align="right"]]**

 * Born on June 28, 1577, [|Peter Paul Rubens] was a Baroque style painter that also served as Spanish diplomat and a lawyer. He married Isabella Brant in 1609. Rubens was later knighted for his diplomatic efforts by Charles I of England. Brant died in 1626, and Rubens then married Helen Fourment. He had a total of eight children, one of which was born after his death. He died on May 30, 1640. Rubens is best known for his painting on the ceiling of the Banquet House at the Palace of Whitehall, and what some might consider his masterpiece, //The Massacre of the Innocents//, a painting which sold for $76.2 million in 2002. **

=Reflection =

Looking back on this project, I consider it predominately successful, though somethings did not appear as planned, there were several difficulties, and there are several things I would have liked to change. First, the script was moderately successful at conveying all four character traits for both Adam and Lot, but it was lacking in many ways. Despite numerous re-structuring attempts, I could not manage to incorporate a strong climax as I would have liked, and the action reaches its peak early, and then slowly declines at the end, which was not desirable either. The main difficulty with the script was the original idea. Once I knew I was going to write about Adam and Lot, the actual dialogue was fairly easy to write, which might also be explained by the missing elements of the script. The first two character analyses came out well, and I believe I wrote them to be quite concise yet persuasive, and I consider them the most solid part of the project. The dialogue analysis was much harder, as I had to reverse the dialogue creating process, yet avoid writing the same paragraph as Adam's first one. Though it argues well, the third analysis paragraph is wordy, awkward and repetitive. If I were to re write any of them it would be that one. The introductory paragraph, though less significant, is the part of the project I am most proud of. I find it eloquent, and it conveys an interesting idea, as well as explaining the basic theme for the dialogue. Incorporating a summary was slightly awkward, though. Not much can be said for the webspiration chart, but it was somewhat helpful once complete. In contrast with webspiration, all of the other technology involved in this project gave me no end of trouble. In particular, the internet collaboration website sporting the poorest excuse for a word processing program that I have ever seen, wikispaces, made all possible effort to impede me at every turn. In the process, I discovered that copy/pasting a dialogue into a wiki clears it of everything save the images, that I do not actually control the point, color, position, boldness or italicization of the font, that underline cannot be turned off with the button, and that inserting a horizontal line will make headings vanish. In addition, the program I used to record the audio, Garageband, is impossible to operate, and even more difficult to remove files for exporting to wikispaces' incompetent up-loader from. Also, in order to compress the sound file into an exportable Mp3, I was unable to include the two sound effects that I had found partly due to the Mp3 file, and partly due to the fact that I have next to no understanding of computer operation, and was unable to attach them. If I were to do the entire project again, however, I would really choose different characters from the beginning, and include some physical action in the script to give it a better plot structure, and clearer, less bluntly stated characterization. There are certainly many improvements that could be made, and several things that I wish I could have done to add to this project, but I think that is overall mostly as I hoped.

=Works Cited =

//The Augmented Third Edition New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version College Edition//. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2007. Print.

"Masaccio." //wga.com// The Web Gallery of Art. n.d. Web. 16 May, 2010.

"Masaccio." //historyofpainters.com// History of Painters. n.d. Web. 16 May, 2010.

"Peter Paul Rubens." //peterpaulrubens.org// Peter Paul Rubens-The Complete Works. n.d. Web. 16 May, 2010.

= =