Childbirth as a Metaphor for Crisis

Childbirth as a Metaphor for Crisis

by Claudia D. Bergmann

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About
Crises and catastrophes of all kinds have always confronted humans with great challenges. The present study examines the question of how literary texts process and deal with these challenges through the imaginary world of metaphors. It concentrates on the metaphor of childbirth, which compares people racked with crisis to women in labour (and sometimes vice versa). The texts examined are taken from the Ancient Orient and the Old Testament, together with a text exemplar from the Qumran corpus, which takes up the metaphor of childbirth and develops it further.

Discussion questions for Childbirth as a Metaphor for Crisis

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  1. 1

    How does comparing a societal or personal crisis to the physical agony and transformation of childbirth change the way we understand suffering, and what does this metaphor imply about the nature of survival?

  2. 2

    Bergmann explores how ancient texts use the labor metaphor to process catastrophic events; why do you think humans instinctively reach for biological and bodily metaphors to make sense of large-scale historical trauma?

  3. 3

    In your own life, have you ever experienced a personal challenge or crisis that felt akin to a painful labor leading to a new beginning, and did the reality of the outcome match the "birth" metaphor?

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