Contrasting Jacob-Esau and Myrrha-Cinyras

In both narratives a familial conflict exists between the lines of favoritism and incestuous

love between the father and child relationship. Customary and familial situations have been in

the form of different combinations over decades. The points of contact between both the

genesis’s have stimulated substantial annotations through the years. The Jacob-Esau narrative

strings along the lines of sibling rivalry and child favoritism, whereas Myrrha-Cinyras portrays

incest between father and daughter.

The narrative of Jacob-Esau share grounds of having a sibling and being the father’s

favorite child. They share a sense of sensitivity and attain an emotional support. The emotional

support then gets them further success in their wants that they are hesitant to attain and fear to

achieve as they are bounded by serious consequences. In a strange way they are similar because

Jacob having a twin brother and Myrrha having a brother that they fear a conflict. Jacob fears the

conflict of getting the blessings of the father in the disguise of his brother Esau. Jacob as being

directed by his mother about lying and getting the power in his hands as he is the mother’s

favorite and on the other hand Myrrha sharing the conflict of incest with her father while ending

up as being the mother of her brother’s sibling.

Both characters (Jacob-Myrrha) also share a similarity of getting help from someone to

achieve their desire, such as Jacob has help of her mother who plots the whole idea about how to

get the blessing of the father for Jacob as he is a delicate one of the two and her favorite. The

mother sets the whole environment for him fulfil the father’s wishes which result him in getting

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the prayers and blessings that were initially meant for Esau. In the case of Myrrha she gets her

help from the nurse to get her desire fulfilled of having an incestuous relationship with her

father. The characters share a similar nature that Myrrha has timid nature and Jacob being the

stay at home tent and not being the country guy. Both of the characters get what they desire as a

conclusion, but this is followed by a sense of constant threat and conflict.

The contrast between these characters is that Jacob and Esau had started off with a conflict

while being in the womb of their mother, the conflict was previously described in the earlier

context, that there will be a clash between the two twins out of which one will be killed by the

other. In the case of Myrrha there is no conflict but it is a hidden secret that arises with the

passage of time. Both had a sense of wrong of the act that they committed willingly which were

followed by the consequences.

The other contrasting factor is that Myrrha attains help from the nurse that is not her family

member but the person who helped to raise her, while Jacob attains help of his mother who

guides her the process of being successfully disguised as his brother while what Myrrha did was

not an acceptable act within her family she still managed to attain the sympathy of the nurse and

Cinyras.

The contrast in Jacob-Esau is that Jacob gets the birthright of Esau in exchange of his

helplessness and then he follows it by getting the blessing of father that concluded that all the

people and the other sibling to bow down before him which results him into a good winning

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situation. The underlining contrast between the actions of the two brothers can be summed as

Esau’s action being impulse and Jacob’s being introspective.

Myrrha on the other hand ends up in trouble of being impregnated by her father’s child

which results her in complete loss and a constant fear, Myrrha roams until the Gods take

mercifulness and transmute her into a myrrh tree. In transmuting Myrrha into a tree, the Gods

and Goddesses seem to suggest that there's no other clarification for her because her atypical

yearnings would definitely have had drawn out the anger of the Gods, she has gone too far down

her path to easily abscond to a different terrestrial. Her narrative expresses the final word irony:

it had been the malefactor who cogitated obligations and traditions even quite more than all the

others.

This concludes the assignment to the fact that both characters fell into a situation that held

them in a difficult position out of their desires. Paralleling both narratives, we cannot keep the

protagonist/antagonist on a dichotomous scale to weigh the rights and wrongs. In both narratives

a familial conflict exists between the lines of favoritism and incestuous love between the father

and child relationship. Within these two narratives there is undeniable prominence on the

meticulous chosen family and election of the current family.