1. Arti Patel Angelica Santos Nick Anderson Yomna Eid

2.  Hades doesn’t want cracks in the earth to bring in daylight to his kingdom. It would terrify his subjects who have become used to perpetual darkness.  Hades falls in love with Persephone.  He asked Zeus permission to marry his daughter. Zeus explains to him how Demeter, Persephone’s mother, would never agree. Zeus tells his brother to abduct Persephone and make her his bride.

3.  Hades goes along with that plan and decides to put it into action one day when Persephone was picking flowers.  Demeter hears her daughter’s cries and goes searching for her. She travels all over earth searching for her daughter but could not find her.  Demeter decides to visit Helius, the Lord of the Sun for answers. Helius watches over gods and mortals. Helius explains that her daughter’s disappearance is to blame on Zeus and how he gave her to their brother Hades as his wife.

4.  Demeter changes herself into an old woman and wanders through towns and fields. She ends up meeting a family who offer her a job as a nurse for their son. She accepts hoping it will help ease her pain of losing her daughter but instead reminds her of how much she misses her.  Demeter’s anger was now affecting other people. People were slowing dying because of lack of food and water. They needed Demeter’s help to plant and grow their crops.  Zeus sees what is happening and ask Iris of the Golden Wings to get Demeter to Mount Olympus.

5.  Demeter begs Zeus to help free their daughter from the dark kingdom and from their brother. She says she’d forgive him for the marriage and crime. Zeus questions if their brother’s happiness matters or not but agrees to free Persephone to cease Demeter’s anger.  Persephone can only leave if she has not eaten anything from the dark land. If you were to eat anything from there, you must live there for forever.  Zeus sends his messenger, Hermes of the Golden Wand, down to the kingdom of dead to persuade its lord to let him bring Persephone out and back to her mother. Hades agrees to let Persephone reunite with her mother.

6.  Before she leaves she is reminded by Ascalaphus, the son of an underworld river god, that she once ate sweet seeds of a pomegranate.  She discovers that it was Hades plan for her to eat the fruit so their marriage bond would be tied for enterity.  In the end, they made a comprise to make Demeter and Persephone happy that Persephone would stay one of the three seasons with her dark husband and kingdom and the other two in the sunlight with her parents, Zeus and Demeter.

7.  A mother’s love is strong. Demeter never stopped and gave up on her child and kept searching for her. She tries her best to bring her back into the sunlight where she would be happy. She put her daughter first above everyone and cared for her so much like every mother. It also showed the strong bond between a mother and their child.