Rope

Abstract

Rope is a collection of six interconnected short stories. Each story is told within another. The first story is told within the last, creating a loop. The stories have their original inspiration in Norse Mythology. Structurally, the looped sequence is meant to mimic the form of the World Serpent of Norse Mythology who bites his own tail. It also serves to reflect the idea of binding that runs throughout the work. Loki, the trickster god of Norse Mythology, had a child who was prophesized to bring about the end of the gods. The gods bound Loki’s child—the wolf Fenrir—with a magical rope comprised of six imaginary ingredients: the roots of a mountain, the sound of a cat’s step, the breath of a fish, the beard of a woman, the sinews of a bear, and the spit of a bird. Each story in this project is named after one of the ingredients which went into the making of the rope. Each story represents a different aspect of life which can metaphorically bind a person: language, memory, ideas of possession, ideas of beauty, and fear of death. The project uses mythology in the tradition of myths being stories that attempt to make sense of the world around us, to try to help explain something unexplainable.