"THE STORIES WE LIVE BY: PERSONAL MYTHS AND THE MAKING OF THE SELF"

In The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self by Dan McAdams we learn about how myths are created throughout ones life experience. We see the many elements of what a myth is, how we create our own that reflects our personal life, and the reasons in which we make these stories in the first place. The introduction talks about the reasons in which myths are created and defines a myth as "A special kind of story that each of us naturally constructs to bring together the different parts of ourselves and our lives into a purposeful and convincing whole" (Dan McAdams 12). As explained in our english class man by nature needs a companion in order to survive. This story describes to us that man naturally makes a myth to reflect personal experiences with others, in order to create a good connection with each other. These myths help one another get comfortable with each other socially; an important factor that one must obtain in a society, which is the point McAdams makes in the introduction. After reading the introduction, we read about Margaret Sands and her self-experiences.She talks about the progress of her myth and how its developing into a tragic story. Like any other story, a myth is composed of a beginning, middle and end. The beginning starts with your early childhood, the middle about your greatest accomplishments, tragics and good memories that you had, and the end concludes with you connecting with everyone else in the real world. In the end, I learned alot how to compose a myth and realized how much it brings character out to other people. I knew after reading about Margaret Sands that her myth was filled with sorrow and tragedy, but I also learned how one can use this story as inspiration towards creating his or her own myth.

This story connects with film class in which one can reveal themselves through past experiences they had. The part where it connects with filming are the elements required towards making a myth are the same elements that are used in filming any kind of movie. Whether its an autobiography or a fiction movie, the same structure used in creating a myth are the exact requirements needed towards making a film.