O'Shea and Walker point out that "in the many cycles that our ancestors witnessed and experienced {day and night, the crop cycle, the four seasons, or life and death}, they were far too astute to miss the corresponding application to their entire world: someday it too will end." They define millennium as referring "to the end of the current age" with the implication that the transition from one age to the next "is marked by events of the most horrible nature: an apocalypse."

The authors' analyses of each major religion shows how cultural beliefs about the end of the world and new beginnings are woven into the tapestry of worship. They also show how millennial beliefs made their way into fairy tales and folklore, and how those beliefs affected the daily lives of ordinary people.

The chapter on contemporary America discusses the rapid technological advances made in the past hundred years, the "psychic apocalypse" of mass genocide, the development of our ability to totally destroy the world with nuclear weapons, and the proliferation of deadly diseases like AIDS. In life today, "there is no safe haven," leading some people into cults or following messiahs like David Koresh or Jim Jones.

The final chapter deals with prophesy. As man is aware that the world must sometime end, "his ongoing concern [can be] confined to a single question: When?" Prophesy attempts to provide an answer to that question. Millennial prophesies include those of Nostradamus, and the Bible Code.

The Millennium Myth is a scholarly work, heavily annotated. Each chapter has its own bibliography. It will appeal to readers wanting a broad perspective on millennial beliefs through the ages.

Thoroughly researched and documented, it is at the same time compellingly narrated, intelligently organized, and beautifully phrased. In short, a literary and scholarly triumph for these talented young authors.

A great story, and very interesting to read! I have never watched the movie, but I want to watch it now. There is a set of pictures from the movie(I think) around the middle of the book and I thought it was quite interesting to look at them. If you like animal-whale stories, I'm sure you'd like this book. Even if you don't like animal-whale stories, I think you would like it anyway! My opinion is that this book was very interesting!

Having much faith in Kate Chopin as a writer, I never felt 'the awakening' was about sex. This was too easy, even for a book set in Victorian Society. Further, it occurred to me that although women were limited beyond the domestic sphere in this era, suicide was not particular to the phenomenology of Victorian women (as it was, say, to Wall Street brokers at the onset of the Great Depression).

"The Awakening," in title and content, is irony. Edna Pontellier's awakening is about who she perceives herself to be, and who she actually is. She dreams of passion and romance and embarks on a summer affair, yet she married Leonce simply to spite her parents, who don't like him. She moves out of the family home to live on her own--with the permission, and resources, of Leonce--hardly independent. She claims to crave intimacy, yet she fails horribly at every intimate relationship in her life: she is detached with her children, indifferent to her husband, leery of her artist friend, and can hardly stand another minute at the bedside of her warm, maternal friend, Mrs. Ratignolle, to assist her in childbirth. (Ratignolle was my favorite character of all, read after read, simply because she was so content with herself.)

The Awakening? The surprise is on Edna, who is not the person she imagines herself to be. The irony? Edna Pontellier is never awakened to this, even at the bitter end. Feminists have adopted this book as their siren song...embarrassing at least! A feminist reading would, predictably, indict Victorian society as oppressive to women. Yawn...So that's new?!! Tell us something we don't know! I can tell you that concept wouldn't be enough to keep a book around for a hundred years.

But the concept that has sustained this novel over a century's time is its irony. And it is superbly subtle. I believe Chopin deliberately set up Victorian society as her backdrop to cleverly mask this irony...'the awakening' is not something good (a daring sexual awakening in a dark era for women): it is something horrible that evolves and is apparent to everyone except the person experiencing it. This reading makes Edna's character worth hating! Chopin herself hated Edna Pontellier and called her a liar through her imagined conversation with her artist friend at the end of the novel.

Chopin also cleverly tips the scales in Edna's favor in the first half of the novel, but a careful read reveals those scales weighed against her in the second half. I give the novel 5 stars because it took me three readings and help from a PhD lit professor to figure out this book. And I'm proud to say that I am, at last, awakened.

My only complaints are that the ending was unrealistic. (Of course, it fit the BOOK completely---it just wasn't practical.) I also think the portrayal of Edna as a nonchalant mother (as opposed to a nurturing mother) was unfair. Chopin wanted readers to view Edna as a victim, and when Edna turned around and neglected her own children...that didn't help our sympathy for her. ...Yet surely we readers realized this was a woman who was too oppressed and stifled to know what to do with herself.

Anyway, before I forget, a word of caution: HAVE A DICTIONARY NEARBY!! WHOA! Chopin was obviously VERY intelligent, along with being ahead of her time. Vocab. word after vocab. word, I tell ya.

Overall, the reader feels pity for practically every character. But it's not such a melancholy atmosphere that would make one want to stop reading it; it's merely proof that Chopin can weave a web of believable characters struggling with believable circumstances.

I would voice one more disappointment, though, if it wouldn't serve as a spoiler. ...Um, I think I was hoping that Edna would betray her husband a little more than she did...succumb to temptation a bit more...because I was rooting for her! I was sympathizing with her, and I thought she should get what she has longed for. But no such luck. Her conscience probably prevented something from going too far. Rats.

This is a sophisticated read laced with French phrases and lengthy paragraphs, but worth your while.