Both Sundiata and Popol Vuh deal centrally with a heroic quest. Unit 1B’s introduction to the Five Great Themes of World Literature states with regard to the hero: “The surest way to understand what a culture of the past most values is to focus on what it considers heroic, in that a culture recognizes its heroes as embodying its most important ideas, the values that are essential.” Discuss what forces Sundiata and the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque have to overcome and how they go about doing it.
