Reading Diary B: South African Folktales

To start, I was slightly confused by The Dance for Water. I believed it was earlier in this unit that I read another story that was almost exactly identical. The Dance for Water is a story about how all the animals but the Hare dance to get water, and it actually works. Then the Hare drinks the water even though he didn't dance for it any everyone's upset. So they decide to have the Tortoise hide at the edge of the pond and make his shell sticky, so that when the Hare came he would be stuck to the Tortoise's shell. In the previous portion of the unit, The Story of a Dam tells a similar story concerning Jackal, one that ends with Lion determining the punishment will be spinning by the tail and dashing Jackal's head against the rocks. In the second story, the punishment is taking Rabbit's tail and dashing his head against the stones. I found this close parallelism in consecutive stories interesting and a little confusing. Outside of that, I again enjoyed the second half of this unit, though there were no stories that really stood out to me like Tink Tinkje did in the first half.

Citation:
South African Folktales

Rabbit tracks in the sand

Reading Diary A: South African Folktales

First, an overall comment. I enjoyed these stories quite a bit but was somewhat frustrated with them. The Lion loses to the Jackal in basically every single story. I know that this is a shout out to being cunning and clever and manipulative, but the Jackal was also pretty clearly a terrible creature. I'm boring and prefer a story with a moral message that I approve of, so that was somewhat discouraging. On an individual level though, I thought the stories were quite good. My favorite was Tink-Tinkje, which is a story about the competition between the birds of South Africa to be named King of the birds. There is a lot of disagreement on what the actual competition should be, but ultimately they decide that it will be whoever can fly the highest. This seems rigged from the start, because it's openly acknowledged that the Vulture can fly the highest. But they compete anyways, and just when the Vulture thinks it has flown the highest, the Tink-Tinkje appears from beneath its (the Vulture's) wing and declares that it has actually flown the highest. I did enjoy this show of cunning to outwit a physically superior animal, which is interesting because it is somewhat a parallel of the situation between the Jackal and the Lion. That further reinforces for me the idea that the message of a story has quite a bit to do with whether or not I enjoy it.

South African Folktales

Tink-Tinkje Bird

Reading Diary A: Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria

Topic: The stories I focused on in this unit were The Fish and the Leopard's Wife and The Elephant and the Tortoise. Each of these stories is intended to explain natural phenomena that occur with animals in Africa. The first tells the story of the Fish, who was banished to live only in the water after taking part in an affair with the Leopard's wife. The Leopard and the Fish are good friends, so the Leopard asks the King to handle the punishment. This punishment is to be allowed to live only in the water, and to be killed if the Fish comes on land. The second story, explains why the Elephant has such small eyes. The Elephant used to eat so much food at feasts that other animals couldn't get their fair share. So, the Tortoise tricks the Elephant into trading each of his eyes in exchange for more food. After realizing he has been tricked, the Elephant talks the Worm into giving him his eyes. For this reason, the Elephant has small eyes and the Worm is blind. This was the general theme of all the stories I read in the unit, creating an explanation for the characteristics of the various animals in Africa.

Table of Contents:
Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria

Elephant eye

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Extra Reading Diary: Raja Rasalu

I enjoyed the second half of Raja Rasalu quite a bit. My favorite story was Raja Rasalu and the Swans. It was about a crow stealing the wife of a swan by tricking the king into believing that the wife had been stolen from him in the first place. Raja Rasalu again arrives as an arbiter of justice, correcting the king and telling him that in fact the crow had stolen the wife of the swan. This is a running theme for Rasalu, as in most stories he is righting some type of wrong. This is another reason I enjoyed the stories, as I feel it's an easy idea to support. Of the readings I've done this, this was the first that included much poetry at all. I personally have trouble following and interpreting poetry all that well because I think it takes a little bit more patience and intricate thought than I can typically dedicate to reading. I thought I understood it reasonably well though, and it made the speaking portions of the readings more interesting and vivid.

Link:
Raja Rasalu

Romantic Tales from the Punjab

Reading Diary A: Raja Rasalu

My reading for Week 5 was interesting because it was actually somewhat similar to the Sindbad stories I read in Week 4, but I enjoyed it a lot more. I've been trying to do some thinking to figure out why exactly that is. Raja Rasalu is a somewhat invincible, incredibly strong and smart hero. He beats a famous king in a game of skill and kills many giants. He's just as infallible as Sindbad, yet I found him to be a much more likeable character. I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that the stories of Raja Rasalu are set in 3rd person, whereas the stories about Sindbad are first person. Each achieves great successes, but in the case of Sindbad it feels as though he is bragging, while it feels like Raja Rasalu's story is just being accurately recounted. I think this has something to do with the fact that I'm especially reactive to what I consider bragging, and Sindbad was especially unlikeable to me. The other factor is that Raja Rasalu has undeniable abilities. His major successes are by virtue of his major capabilities, whereas with Sinbad it appeared that everything was a result of his general luck. I have always felt that capable people are more worthy of respect than those that just fell into a situation, so I enjoyed Raja Rasalu more. I also felt that there was more variety to the stories in Raja Rasalu and then they never seemed to follow just one set storyline.

Links:
Raja Rasalu

Raja Rasalu kills the giants

Essay: Why Sindbad Doesn't Fit My Definition of a "Hero"

One thing I find particularly compelling about folktales and mythology is the role of heroes in them. I have a bit of a Romantic outlook on life and so I've always loved the idea of a hero who is both physically and ideologically superior to the people around them. I like it especially because I don't think it has the same capability to exist today in the world of guns and poisons and a thousand different ways to die that take no talent or ability. I like heroes from these tales most because they are heroes by virtue both of their personal characteristics and their individual capabilities with a sword or bow and arrow, or any other variety of weapon that requires skill. As such, and without much knowledge of Sindbad, I went into this unit kind of expecting more of this. Or even half of this. What I felt like I found was a generally typical man with no extraordinary circumstances who continually found himself getting lucky. He wasn't particularly capable with a weapon or morally righteous, but somehow seemed to always be the last one living. I guess you could argue that this is a skill in and of itself, but I had a hard time seeing it that way. What it ultimately felt like was an old man recounting stories that had grown in splendor and unlikeliness over the preceding 30 or 40 years. I don't think that necessarily says anything about the actual merit of the tales of Sindbad, but it was a stark difference from the Greek mythology I read in the previous unit. I also found that it really failed to teach much of a lesson at all, outside of "do whatever you want because it'll be other people that die". In conclusion, the plot of Sindbad itself was somewhat interesting and had a good amount of variety. Despite this, at the end of the day I felt myself disappointed by the lack of a real hero or lesson.

The Voyages of Sindbad

Roc by Rene Bull

Reading Diary B: Voyages of Sindbad

Summary: I really feel like I'm just missing the point in these Sindbad stories. The more I read them the less I enjoyed them. I think that I just don't like the structure of a hero constantly being honored and achieving incredible things speaking about it in first person. In elementary school I was a bit of a braggart and ever since my grandpa sat me down and gave me a talking to I've been especially aware of what I perceive as bragging coming from myself and other people. Reading Sindbad just feels like listening to that guy at the high school reunion who wants people to know about all the incredible things he has done in life, even though most of them are definitely to good to be true. I did enjoy that his sixth and seventh voyages were at least tied together by the plot, I thought this plus the addition of complementary character that stayed around made it much more interesting.

Table of Contents:
The Voyages of Sindbad
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

Sindbad is taken to the elephant graveyard

Reading Diary A: Voyages of Sindbad

Topic: I had some sort of mixed feelings about Sindbad as a whole. I'm sure it's some sort of storytelling method, but I didn't particularly enjoy how each of his voyages mostly followed the same basic structure, even down to reuniting with the original captain and recovering his shipment of goods. I read Ovid's Metamorphoses previously and they seemed to more or less follow a constantly changing storyline, which I appreciated. I just found these stories too repetitive. I did enjoy the stories of Sindbad once he had become trapped in one place or another though, especially on the island with the one-eyed giants. It was definitely very interesting the parallels this story had to one of the tales of Odysseus. We aren't especially far into this class but I definitely feel as though repitition of themes and even plotlines is a very common thing across cultures. This could possibly be put down to plagiarism but I think a more benign explanation for it is that storytellers want to put tales in a context that their listeners will understand and appreciate. So if a storyteller from Baghdad heard the tale of Odysseus, it actually makes a lot of sense for him to translate it over to Sindbad so his listeners can relate better.

Table of Contents:
Voyages of Sindbad
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

The one-eyed giant that eats many of the sailors

Greek Mythological Creatures of Africa Styles

Topic: My Storybook will be about some of the different animals of Ethiopia that are mentioned in Greek mythology. My goal is to find four different mythological beasts to 'do battle with'. My main source for this will likely be the Theoi Greek Mythology Bestiary but I will also spend time searching for other sources. Some possible animals I've already found are Drakones Aithiopikoi and Pegasoi Aithiopikoi. My criteria will be animals only from Africa with the potential of somehow coming to conflict with a human. Some of the stories may combine multiple animals instead of just one.

Bibliography: 
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8. 72 (trans. Rackham) (Roman encyclopedia C1st A.D.)
Aelian, On Animals 2. 21 (trans. Scholfield) (Greek natural history C2nd A.D.)

Pegasoi Aithopikoi

Microblogging: I read a description of storytelling in the form of a blog and at the end it mentioned telling the story as though it were via Twitter. I think this could be a super interesting format for the story, almost as though an adventurer is live tweeting his trip through mythological Africa. I think it could be used to provide some comedy in the story.

Pick Your Own Ending: I love the idea of pick your own ending. I used to read a lot of books with this type. Instead of writing just different endings, I think I would write a total of 5 stories with the final 2 being the potential endings. This might be a great way to make the stories even more interesting. They could either be about the same animal but with positive/negative ending or the decision could lead to encountering a different animal and therefore a different experience. 

The Prequel: I also really like the idea of a prequel. I have read stories about a lot of Greek heroes and I think it would be really cool to give an origin story to someone like Achilles. It could take details from already written stories, like a scar or injury, and give them a specific origin. 

Traveler As Storyteller: I was also interested in stories from the perspective of a traveler. I think this would be interesting because it doesn't demand any sort of realism to the stories. Although Greek mythology includes a lot of supernatural aspects, this would allow me to go ahead and change them as a see fit and as I believe will most benefit the story.