Nyina Kigwa Essay

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What is a myth? There is such a vast amount of written material in the world that one could classify as myth, however, there are 5 essential features fabricated by anthropologist Robert Winzeler that help dictates whether or not a story is a myth. This essay’s goal is to analyze the story of Nyina Kigwa and to see whether or not Winzelers essential features apply to it. Winzeler's first essential feature is that a myth must be a story, not a statement of belief or doctrine. Secondly, myths must include personalities that vary in form, such as an animal, human, supernatural entities, and sometimes a combination of multiple features. Thirdly, it must be a believed story and not just known; take Harry Potter as an example, it is a widely popular story but not believed. Winzeler fourth essential feature is that a myth must not have a known author. For example, we know that J.K Rowling wrote Harry Potter, but no one knows who wrote the story of the classical myth hero, Hercules. Lastly, classic mythological stories involve larger than life connotations. Using Winzelers five essential factors, let's discover whether the story of Nyina Kigwa resembles a classical myth or just another story. …show more content…

Nyina Kigwa is not a formal name for the story, at least in the text that was present. When searched online, there were very few documents in English, the rest were in Kinyarwanda. From the information that was available, the story of Nyina Kigwa was discovered by Father F. Dufays and Father P. Loupias from a Mututsi, a member of a people forming a minority of the population of Rwanda and Burundi. The mututsi fought his fellow tribesman he sought protection from missionaries and told the story in return for the protection he

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