The Making Of Gods And People By Leon Garfield And Edward Blishen

The Making of Gods and People

By: Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen

At the start, the Earth, known as Gaia was rained down upon by sky, Uranus. This rain helped create life on Earth. This first set of children were monsters with fifty heads and one hundred hands each (Garfield and Blishen 1). Uranus did not like his children as they were a horrific sight and as a result sent them to Tartarus, an underworld within Gaia. Another set of children were born, this time they were Cyclopes, which resembled humans, but only had one eye in the center of their forehead and were enormous creatures (1). These children were also sent off to Tartarus. The final set of children born were the Titans, they were humans but slightly larger; these were the children

Cronus, filled with worries of being overruled by his children the way he had done with his father decided to eat all of his children to prevent his worries from becoming real (2). An angered Rhea could do nothing but keep her feelings to herself. She finally gave birth to a boy, but instead of giving the baby to Cronus, she gave him a stone wrapped in sheets. An oblivious Cronus took the bundle and devoured it at once. As time went on Zeus, an immortal God grew from a child to a man (2). Along with his mother, the two decided to give Cronus a poisoned drink. As Cronus kept asking for drinks to quench his thirst he did not notice that he was being tampered with. Suddenly his throat burned and his mouth kept stretching and stretching (2). All of a sudden he began to vomit; he did so six times and when he was done he saw his children rise above him. Cronus ran far away to a mountain where he found the other Titans and asked them for their help in the war against the gods (2). The gods often went near the fortress of the Titans but were pushed away. Remembering what the timeless nymphs of Mount Ida told him, Zeus decided to go to Tartarus and free the Cyclopes and the fifty-headed giants

At last they found the prisoners of Tartarus (3). The giants were all chained up and were all in visible emotional and physical pain. The three brothers freed the giants and they all fled from Tartarus to find their sisters who were waiting for them (3-4). The Cyclopes then provide all the gods with needed weapons, they gave Hades the Helmet of Invisibility, the Trident that shakes the Earth was given to Poseidon, and Zeus received the Thunderbolt. Using the weapons given to them, the three gods were able to overrule Cronus and banish the Titans