If you haven’t already let me know which basic story you want to work on for the next assignments of the semester, please be sure to do so via email, or through this form.
Task: Read two stories from a single category of your choice from the archive below. Please choose stories that are separated by geographical space (i.e. Slovakia and England, India and France, as opposed to England and Ireland.)
What stories did you read? What was interesting about them? (Comment below)
5 thoughts on “Separated by Geography”
I chose the topic of the Devil. I chose one story from India and one from New York. The one from India was about a mother giving her eldest daughter as a bride to a tiger for helping her to carry some wheat from the field. The one from New York was very similar to the blue beard story we read for last class. There was a bull lingering in a field so the daughter went to shoo it away but it led her to a house with a lot of rooms. The bull handed her some keys and told her she could go into any room except one, but obviously she didn’t listen and saw the dead bodies in the room. She was killed by the bull and then her sister was taken to the house and given the same instructions. Her sister did look into the room but heeded the advice of a cat and figured out how to get the blood off the key so when the bull returned and saw that the sister obeyed his commands, he transformed into a handsome prince and married her.
I get that the tiger and the bull are supposed to represent the devil and evil but I would have thought there would be more evil and gore. Compared to the fairytales we’ve been reading, I feel like the presence of the Devil in these 2 stories was very light.
The topic I chose was “Man and Serpent” and the two versions I looked at were Aesop’s “The Man and the Serpent” and the Cherokee Nation’s “The Rattlesnake’s Vengeance”. Both stories are based upon a rattlesnake killing a person and a person then killing a rattlesnake. In Aesop’s version which overall is less detailed, the rattlesnake kills a man’s child so the man kills a rattlesnake. The Cherokee version is much more detailed and starts off with the mother killing a rattlesnake to protect her kids, then the rattlesnakes kill her later after making an agreement with the father. The idea that is shared between the two is “an eye for an eye” for every death of a rattlesnake there is a death of a person.
I did the Golden Goose. I chose The Duck That Laid Golden Eggs (Russia) and The Lucky-Bird Humá (Kashmir) . What was interesting about these stories were the fact that they had complete different endings and styles. The Russian version was more of a rags to riches kind of story and The Lucky Bird Huma carried more of a moral lesson. The Duck That Laid Golden Eggs ended on a high note, with the poor boy becoming the Czar after eating the duck and bringing his family over to live in his kingdom. The Lucky Bird Huma ended bitterly with the poor man not winning anything at the end because he was too stubborn and dumb to listen to the goose when he said “if you don’t kill me I could make your richer than any king would” and he took advantage of the goose’s kindness by selling the first egg he received for a cheap price and then choosing to capture and sell the goose for 1 rupee which still wouldn’t make him rich. Here the most consistent thing is the fact that there is a Goose who lays eggs and there is a poor character or family that is suffering and the eggs are their blessing. Now the stories diverge when the outcome of these blessings are revealed, with one ending in happiness and the other in curse.
I chose two animal bride stories, one from India and one from the Philippines. The plot twists in both stories was very interesting. The story in India was dark as the ending ended in suicide, however the end went well for some of the characters. The story in Philippines also was interesting because it had a lot of suspense.
I chose the “Abducted by Aliens” category and read “The Old Man and the Fairies” (Wales) along with “The Aged Bride” (Denmark). I’ve always been fascinated by tales that included fairies or elves because these creatures are believed to be evil in Mexico, which is the opposite from what Disney movies portray. I found “The Old Man and the Fairies” to be an unfortunate story because it was a classic case of too good to be true. In choosing to be honest with his wife, he lost his gold which does not seem like a fair exchange. Moreover, I was not prepared for the ending for “The Aged Bride”. This story sounds like a complete nightmare and just leaves me heartbroken for the newlyweds who were robbed from having the chance to live their lives as a married couple.