Comments on Noah's Arc

I looked up "Noah's Arc" on Google Images to see the first thing that came up. And, of course, it was this painting depicting Noah's Arc in a childlike way with all the happy animals poking out and the Rainbow being the biggest aspect. What about poor Noah and his family? Well, as you all probably could tell, I was a little frustrated during the last class period at how our discussion of Noah's Arc was going. It is such a horrible, heart-wrenching story of God's wrath and about, basically, an earth wide genocide. We tend to look over this more difficult aspect of the story and focus on God's mercy and love towards Noah and the message/origins of the Rainbow. We definitely have a tendency to look over aspects of Biblical stories that are uncomfortable and extremely frightening (Revelation is so rarely read because it is pretty terrifying to consider the lake of fire and all the other aspects of God's judgement on humanity!). But, because this is an English course, it is necessary to look at every aspect of the text and how it would actually effect character development.