Week 11 Essay: Wisdom in the Looking-Glass

This week after reading the Through the Looking Glass Unit, I decided to focus my Essay topic on the idea of wisdom. I also throw some random ideas in about the idea of wisdom as we age.

Throughout the stories, especially in the last stories QueenAlice and Shaking and Waking, we see where the idea of wisdom is tested through riddles. The Red and White Queen are constantly asking Alice questions of what should be simple addition and subtraction but they add a twist to it. A dig minus a bone is a temper. Because when a dog loses his bone he is angry and what is left is his temper. The frog in this story also tricks Alice when she is trying to have someone open the door when she knocks. The frog replies by asking what the door is asking for it to need to be answered.

These concepts stretch our idea of wisdom. We often get stuck in the tradition wisdom that addition and subtraction are easy athematic equations. Rarely would someone answer a subtraction problem in the way that the Queens present them to Alice in this story. It goes to show that we can often become so narrow-minded in our interpretation of certain things. We let our wisdom be filtered or focused on the real and not the abstract. I think the riddles in these stories try to show us that: that we have wisdom and imagination but we must stretch ourselves to think in that abstract way. It is not natural to us.

I also found it interesting as I was reading the story to think about the wisdom I gain from the story now vs. when I was a kid. As a child hearing about Alice in Wonderland I thought about a magical cat and this great kingdom, which was pretty. Now, I realize the depth of the story and the message it was trying to convey. It is interesting to see how our perspectives change as we age. 

Alice in the dream-like world, illustration by John Tenniel

Week 11 Storytelling: The House

Crying Baby, Source: flickr

Out of the blue, there came a loud crying from across the room.

The mom turned around just in time to see her daughter Lilly flailing about and crying hysterically. She was helpless and alone. The mom needed to be by her side immediately in order to comfort her daughter. She flew to the other side of the room so swiftly it was as if she floated. It was all a blur; she did not even know how she got from one side of the room to another. She was only concerned with comforting her crying daughter. Apparently, she had managed to knock down her husband in the process. He was not happy and covered in dust from the fall. The mom called to her husband that he must come to their daughter’s side as quick as he could.

The dad made his way to the daughter’s side, a little more slowly than the Queen, as he was recovering from the fall. On his way to the other side of the room, he noticed how filthy he was from the dust. He was appalled at the thought of a man being so filthy. His face squished together in a look of most discontent as he began to clean his clothes, skin, and hair of the dirt.

As he made his way to his daughter’s side, he could see why Lilly was crying. He took one look at her, and he was so shocked he fell over again.

The dad finally recovered from fainting and looked again at his daughter and then to his wife. The look in his eyes told his wife everything. They both looked at each other completely frightened.

Lilly had been crying for quite some time now. And rightfully so. Her body was covered in red dots all the way from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She was rubbing all over as if she was trying to get out of her own skin.

Luckily, the dad was a doctor. The mom advised him to take notes on what he saw. He pulled out a pen and pad of paper to write down his observations. He noted the feverish look to her pale skin. Next, he wrote down where and how many red dots covered each portion of Lilly’s skin. He kept writing until it was clear he had no more to write.

The mom looked at his notes and was thoroughly confused. It all seemed like gibberish to her. The words could have been written backwards or in a different language for all she could make out of what her husband wrote. She was intrigued by his observations of their daughter and how he would cure her, but she could not comprehend any of the scribbles on his page. She just had to have faith that he knew the meaning.

 

Author’s Note: I decided to take the story of The Looking-Glass house and recreate it to be a realistic story. In the original there is a King and Queen chess piece who make their way to the Pawn (their daughter Lilly) and try to comfort her. Alice carries the Queen to the pawn, and because the Queen cannot see Alice, she is surprised how she gets there so quick. The King falls into ashes (falls into dust) and Alice then tries to clean him. He is again appalled at being in the air and cleaned by something he can’t see. The King decides to document his story in a memorandum of his feelings (doctors notes) and then writes the JABBERWOCKY poem. But, because it is in a looking-glass house the writing is backwards and Alice can’t understand it (just like the queen can not understand the medical notes). My story stretches the original but has the same essential plot line. My story just removes the “mystical” element that the Alice stories encompass and makes it a common story. 

Bibliography: The Looking-Glass House. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll (1871).

Week 11 Reading Diary: Looking Glass Unit

This week I decided to focus on the Looking Glass unit and specifically the story entitled the Looking-Glass House. It seemed the most interesting to me how Alice ponders this glass house and how it appears.

Illustration by John Tenniel

She is explaining to her cats how she wishes she could see what was behind the fireplace. She ponders “I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never CAN tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too — but that may be only pretense, just to make it look as if they had a fire.” You can really imagine the young Alice debating these ideas. When we are young our imagination is vast and you can see that as Alice tries to find any explanation for the smoke. She also finds it amazing how when she holds up a book. They hold up one in the other room. She does not understand the concept of a mirror, as many children don’t, and believes some other people are on the other side doing exactly as she does.

I took the time to look up the definition of looking glass and there were multiple. 1. A mirror  2. Being or involving the opposite of what is normal or expected. The first was an obvious one. But I think the second is important to this story too. Nothing in the story of Alice in Wonderland or Alice and the Looking Glass is normal or expected.

Her imagination continues as she melts into the looking glass room and explores what is in there: talking pawns, and kings, and queens. The fire in the fireplace is not just a fire but a volcano! The king and queen cannot see or hear her which I found interesting. The words of the poem are backwards as I expected from the looking glass element of the room. 

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The Queens, Illustration by John Tenniel

One of my favorite quotes comes from the beginning of the story Queen Alice. It reads: “if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for YOU to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything.” I love this quote for the message it presents. If you always ask for permission to speak, then nothing ever gets spoken. The Queen then later makes another point about speaking that is very important. Alice tries to change her answer to a question but the Red Queen replies: 'when you've once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.” It is true that, although, we can apologize for the things we say, we can never truly take them back. We must face the consequences of our words.

The story continues with these types of riddles where the Red and White Queens quiz Alice on her mathematics skills and trick her with their cleverness. When you subtract a bone from a dog, Alice said nothing is left but the queen says that, the dog will be mad and therefore his temper will remain. An unusual answer to a mathematics question. The riddles continue with a frog who is perplexed when Alice asks who is to answer the door. The frog asks “What’s the door been asking of?” and at first I did not understand this riddle. But, then I realized the frog was spinning the wording to mean that if someone is to answer the door then the door must ask something. I enjoyed this story for the play on words and riddle-like aspect of it. It made me realize we often look so one-sided at things and do not realize the many ways that different people can interpret the same thing.

Week 10 Essay: Analyzing the Rabbit

Rabbit hides in brush as he plans his next trick, source: wikipedia

This week in the Cherokee myths unit, I noticed that every story included in the set of 26 stories included an animal. Some animals were reoccurring; such as the rabbit. And others had smaller roles in single stories. For this weeks essay blog post I decided to focus on the importance of animals in Cherokee culture. I specifically decided to focus on the role of the rabbit who constantly is tricking and fooling the other animals to get his way.

The rabbit is in multiple Cherokee myths and is always the trickster. He is jealous of the otter for having the best fur, so he tricks him into jumping into the water and steals his coat. The possum supposedly had the best tail, and the rabbit got jealous so he had the grasshopper cut off the fur. He is jealous of the deer and wants to win the set of antlers, so he tries to cheat in a competition. When he is bitter about losing the competition, he then tricks the deer into letting him shave his teeth down so that he can no longer eat anything but plants. The rabbit is always jealous of the other animals for what they have. He can not stand not being or having the best looks, so he constantly tricks the other animals. I found it somewhat strange it was a rabbit, because to me, rabbits do not seem like the typical cunning and sly animals. The myths and stories I always heard about rabbits were usually little bunnies. As in the “Tale of Peter Rabbit” and “The Tale of Benjamin Bunny” where you end up feeling sorry for Peter after he gets chased out of the garden and his clothes taken away. I did not find myself feeling bad for the rabbit in the Cherokee myths because he was very rude and hostile towards the other animals.

            There seems to be only one story included in the set where the rabbit is on the other end of the tricks. The Tarapin fools the rabbit in a race by stationing other Tarapins that look identical to the real one throughout the course. The real Tarapin is near the end of the course and he crosses the finish line before the rabbit. In this myth, the rabbit was fooled and not doing the fooling. According to the myth, rabbit stew is prepared and scattered on the path the night before a game so that the other players become tired and lose the game just as the rabbit did. I found it interesting that in this myth the rabbit somewhat gets revenge for all of his other tricking he does in the other myths.

Week 10 Storytelling: The Three Rings

Vintage Diamond Ring Robert gives to Jenny, Source: wikimedia

Jenny and Robert had been friends for a long time. If you asked Jenny, she would say they were strictly friends and nothing more. If you asked Robert, he would say they were strictly friends but he wanted to be more.

Robert had always viewed Jenny as a perfect woman. She was kind and loved by everyone, including him. She was beautiful: big brown eyes and dark skin with long flowing curls that perfectly framed her angelic face. It was hard not to be mesmerized by her pearly white smile that always seemed to radiate from her face.

One day Robert was sitting across from Jenny while they were eating during their lunch break at work. She was looking out the window admiring the perfect fall day outside as the trees were beginning to turn their leaves from green to shades of crimson and gold. Robert was too busy focusing on the beauty sitting across from him to notice the leaves outside. A man sitting at the table next to Robert and Jenny noticed Robert’s longing for her and took pity on him. When Jenny left to return to work, the man approached Robert at the table.

“I saw you were very interested in the woman you were with,” said the man with a grin on his face. “I think I may be able to make her yours if you would accept my help.”

“I do not know what you are talking about,” stammered Robert nervously. “Me and that woman are just friends.”

The man chuckled and smiled at Roberts. “She may think that, but you can not fool me. I know you want to be more than friends with her and that you think she is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. I am a jeweler and design some of the most extravagant rings in the city. Let me design some rings for you and we will make that woman love you as you love her,” explained the man.

Robert was hesitant, but nodded a yes to the man and followed him to his store.

The man helped Robert pick out 3 rings for Jenny. Two of the rings were his best sellers and one of the rings was a one-of-a-kind vintage ring with multiple set diamonds.

The next day Robert gave Jenny the first ring, she was unimpressed and refused Robert’s offer. Robert was disappointed, but Jenny was the most beautiful woman. She needed the most beautiful ring.

The next day Robert presented Jenny with the second ring. She was, again, unimpressed and denied Robert’s proposal. Robert was starting to lose hope that she would ever be his. Maybe they were just destined to be friends forever.

The only ring Robert had left was the one-of-a-kind vintage ring. He knew that if this ring could not capture the heart of Jenny that she would never be his. He set up a romantic dinner and presented the ring to Jenny. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of the ring and a big smile spread across her face. She had never seen a ring this extravagant. She knew Robert loved her dearly and had done everything to show her how much he loved and cared for her. She said yes.

Author's Note: This story was adapted from the Cherokee myth The Origin of Strawberries. In the Cherokee myth, a woman leaves the man who is still in love with her. The great Apportioner (the Sun) takes pity on the man and helps him. He plants huckleberries in the path of the woman but she will not turn around. Next the Sun plants blackberries in front of the woman but she still does not turn around. Lastly, the Sun plants a brand new red berry, strawberries, in front of the woman and she is so intrigued by the new berry she stops and turns to look behind her. She sees her husband who has followed her this whole way and is reminded of her desire for him. She brings the strawberries to her husband and they live happily ever after. I made my story set in the present day and changed the berries to diamond rings. Jenny only says yes when she receives the most extravagant ring so unique she has never seen one like it before.

Bibliography: The Origin of Strawberries. Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney (1900)

Week 10 Reading Diary

Because the tales were shorter for the Cherokee Myths unit, I decided to take notes on a few of my favorite:

How the World Was Made: I greatly enjoyed the imagery that this story entails. The description of the Great Buzzard flapping his wings and creating the valleys and mountains was creative. I enjoy the description of how the world came to be in the perspective of the Cherokee and explains why the Cherokee country is full of mountains. The explanation of how the panther and owl can see through the night, The end states that the woman was to only have one child in a year and it has been so ever since. It makes me wonder if it is still part of Cherokee tradition for woman to only have one child within a year. (what about twins?)

Journey to the Sunrise: The analogy of the sun being a human form but so bright that you could not make out the shape was very interesting. I thought it so creative that the door opened and closed and that was the presence or absence of light. The Sun walked across an archway which is why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

Origin of the Pleiades and the Pine: I found it so amusing that the mother made the boys eat rocks instead of corn since they liked playing with the rocks so much. They flee from their mothers in anger and six of them become the Pleiades in the sky while the one under the earth became the Pine tree. The story explains that the pine is the same nature of the stars and holds itself in the same bright light. This represents the seven boys.

The Origin of Strawberries: I have actually heard this tale before and was delighted to see it again. She was only intrigued with the new fruit, the strawberries, and her desire for her husband grew with every bite. I think it is also saying that we sometimes need a reminder of what great things we truly have. The strawberries were the reminder to the woman of how much she really did desire her husband. She only realized it when she looked back to the west to see him behind her.

How the Rabbit Stole the Otter’s Coat: The first paragraph had me drawing connections from the animals to people. “ Some wore long fur and others short, some had brown, others black or yellow and they were always disputing about their good looks” I love how the story explains the otter jumped in the river to escape the fire and has lived in the water ever since. The rabbit tried to pretend he was the otter and in the end he was discovered and run out of town by the bear. It goes to show that you can not pretend to be something you are not. I also wondered if the bear pulled the rabbit’s tail off and that is why rabbits do not have tails anymore.

Why the Possum’s Tail is Bare: The bear did pull off the rabbit’s tail and now we see in this story that he, again, becomes jealous of the possum who has the most beautiful tail of all the animals. The trickster rabbit sends the cricket to cut off all the hair from the possum’s tail. It was funny to hear the explanation of when a possum is stunned it rolls to the grown and grins. I could visualize it in my mind.

The Deer and the Rabbit: I love how the beginning starts with the contest to see who gets the horns. I obviously know the deer ends up with horns, as a rabbit does not have any, but was interested to hear the story of how the deer wins them. The rabbit tries to cheat and in the end is served his punishment. Since he was so fond of cutting down bushes he could do it for a living, and so he does to this day. I love the Cherokee stories that have an explanation for why things are the way they are.

Why the Deer’s Teeth are Blunt: The trickster rabbit is back at it again trying to get revenge on the deer for winning the antlers. Much like in the Possum tale, the rabbit tricks the deer into letting him shave his teeth to make them sharper, but he actually dulls them out so he can not bite anything but grass and leaves. 

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The Ball Game of the Birds and Animals: I thought it interesting that the animals and birds were separated. I always considered birds as animals but it seems the Cherokee tales distinguish them apart; not as equals. It later explains that the birds are two footed vs the four footed animals. The first small animal became the bat and has his wings and four feet. The next became the flying squirrel. It explains why these two animals have wings but four feet.

The Race Between the Crane and Hummingbird: I felt bad for the poor Crane. He wins the race by taking his journey nice and slow, but in the end he still does not get to marry the woman because she would never marry a bird so ugly. I am not sure what message this Cherokee tale has. I was expecting the Crane to win and for the message to be that you can not judge a book by its cover and underestimate anyone. But in the end, the crane still does not get what he wants.

The Owl Gets Married/The Huhu Gets Married: these two tales were very similar in the idea that a woman needs to find a suitable husband who can hunt and is a hard worker. In both cases the men turn into an owl or a huhu and do not provide for their wives. Since they are lazy, they do not get the hand of the woman in marriage.

The Uktena and the Ulûñsû'tï: The imagery used to describe the Uketna in this tale was great. I really got a sense of the massive size and ugliness of the giant snake through the use of similes. The importance of the 7^th spot from the head becomes apparent because that is where his heart and life are and the only way to kill it. The crystal he guards is what the Cherokee people seek. Its greatest use is for prophecy, yet everybody is afraid of it. I think it tries to show that the gift of knowing the future and holding all this power is a scary one, and something not to be taken lightly.

The Red Man and the Uktena: The hunter saves the life of The Red Man of the Lightening as he is getting strangled by a Uktena. In return, the Red Man gives him medicine and the scale of the Uktena so that the hunter may have game to catch everyday from now on. If you help someone, they will in turn help you back

The Rattlesnake’s Vengeance: I loved this story as the wife kills the rattlesnake and in turn the wife must die as a sacrifice. One for one. And because the husband obliged, he and his people will always be spared of death by singing the song the rattlesnake teaches him. The song is still part of Cherokee culture.

Week 9 Essay: Opposites

For this weeks Essay I decided to try something new and do the Cartoon Essay option. I spent some time looking through the different cartoons and this one made me giggle when I read it, which is always a good thing to be able to draw emotions in such a quick time.

Yesbody Cartoon by Rick Detorie

When reading this cartoon, it took me back to the days of learning antonyms and synonyms. I just wanted to ad un- in front of every word to make it the opposite of a word. I always wanted to say that I was unsad. I still to this day do not understand why unsad is not a word. If you want to say the opposite of happy you could say sad or unhappy. But, if you want to say the opposite of sad you can only say happy. It made no sense to me as a kid learning the rules of opposites. I can definitely relate to the little kid in the picture. You have always been taught that yes is the opposite of no so it seems logical. I think that kids actually think more logically than adults sometimes.

I tried to follow the thought process of the boy and see if he was trying to say that a person had no body and the opposite would be that yes the person had a body. So this would be thinking in terms of describing physical characteristics of a person. You can also take it as looking at the word nobody as an adjective with a negative connotation. He is a nobody- not important, not exciting, a downer. And a yes body is the opposite- someone important, someone exciting, someone who says yes to adventure. Based on the expression of the boy in the images, I believe the second explanation is what the cartoonist was aiming for. In the nobody image the boy has a gloomy look on his face. In the yesbody image he is smiling.

This cartoon reminds me of the struggle learning all of the rules of the English language and of the pure creativity we have as children. We start thinking there is only up and down. Then they throw left and right at us. And then they expect us to think in diagonals and opposite angles. This cartoon made me laugh at remembering how simple it all used to be.

Week 9 Storytelling: Black Bear in the Sky

Ursa Major (Bear) Constellation map, Source: wikipedia

“Once there was a young woman with many suitors, but she refused to marry. She had seven brothers and one little sister. Their mother had been dead many years and they had no relatives, but lived alone with their father.”

Her name was Seke. Her brothers had tried to get her to fall in love with one of their friends. They had held competitions to see who could bring Seke the biggest deer that they had shot down with their bows. Many men had lined up and proclaimed how mesmerized they were by her beauty; how they could not imagine anyone else being her husband.

And Seke was beautiful. The eldest sister resembled their mother, who had passed in a tragic accident right after the youngest sister was born. She had big brown eyes and thick black hair that hung long to the small of her back. Her skin was made tan and rough from the long days spent in the sun.

One day, the little sister was bored picking berries and decided to follow her oldest sister while she was getting wood from the forest. The little sister followed Seke far into the forest where the thickest trees began to keep the rays of the sun from shining through. She could just make out the form of her older sister in front of her. She began to wonder why Seke would come so far into the forest just for wood when she saw a large black bear emerge from behind one of the trees and walk towards Seke. The little sister was frightened and was about to scream out when she saw her older sister lean in and hug the bear. They caressed while the younger sister stood in shock at what she was seeing. When she collected herself enough to move, she sprinted all the way back to the house.

Upon arriving at home, the little sister told the seven brothers and father of what she had seen. Seke and the bear were lovers. The father and brothers grew angry and now knew why Seke would not take any of the suitors they had arranged as her husband.

When Seke returned from gathering wood in the forest, she could see something was wrong with her brothers and father. They told her of their knowledge of her bear lover. The siblings wanted to meet him. If she did not oblige to this, they would kill him. Seke was distraught that her secret had been revealed, and she knew her family would not approve of her marriage to a bear. She cried herself to sleep that night, but knew the next day she would have to bring her family to the bear.

The next day, Seke, her seven brothers, and her younger sister ventured into the forest to find the bear that she claimed as her lover. Seke was nervous and did not know how the meeting would unfold. They traveled deep into the forest until the sun disappeared and the trees were thick. Seke went ahead of her family and called to her lover to come out of his cage. He approached Seke slowly and a gentle smile spread across his black lips on his bristly face. But then he growled and stood up on his hind legs, towering over Seke. He was a black beast with fury in his eyes. Seke did not expect her lover to be that furious with her for bringing her family to see him. She turned around to apologize to her family, when she saw why he was raging and growling.

There stood her family with loaded arrows pointed at the bear, ready to kill him. As her family began to charge towards her lover with arrows ready and he began to charge towards her family with teeth showing and claws out, Seke began to cry. Her family or her lover would die if she could not do something to stop them. But the fury in their eyes showed there was no peaceful solution.

Seke closed her eyes and said to herself “may they be in the only safe place I know, where no human or animal can harm them” And with that her seven brothers and younger sister disappeared from the forest. She was left alone in the forest with her lover, the bear, and they lived a happy life together.

And as for her siblings, they were cast into the sky in the shape of a bear. The little brother is the North Star. The six brothers and the little sister are seen in the Great Dipper. The little sister and eldest brother are in a line with the North Star, the little sister being nearest it because she used to carry her little brother on her back. The other brothers are arranged in order of their age, beginning with the eldest. This is how the seven stars came to be.

Author’s Note: This retelling comes from The Bear Woman. In the original story there is a quarrel between the eledest sister and her siblings when they find out she is in love with a bear. The eldest sister becomes angry with them and turns into a bear to kill them. She kills four of her brothers and then one of the eldest brothers finlly shoots her in the head with an arrow and kills her. The brother then brings the four dead brothers back to life and with no family left, they decide they have nothing left on earth and decide to live in the sky. I kept the idea of the woman being in love with the bear the same but changed how the siblings came to be the constellation in the sky. I thought it was a happier ending, and made it more interesting that the sister wanted to protect both her family and her lover, so she cast them into the sky. The name Seke means black and I thought it was appropriate as a black bear.

Bibliography: The Bear-Woman. Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929).

Reading Diary Week 9: Native American Marriage Tales

For this week’s reading diary I decided to focus on one of my favorite stories from the Native American Marriage Tales unit: The Bear Woman.

Upon first reading this I immediately thought of Beauty and the Beast, of a woman who fell in love with a bear. I thought this would be a love story about a woman who fell in love with a bear and then by some magical powers was turned into a bear and lived happily ever after with her bear husband. This is a unit about marriage, so it seemed logical. However, I was very wrong. But, I was pleasantly surprised with how the actual story unfolded.

            One of the points that made me ponder, was when the big sister and little sister pretended to be bears in the woods. The big sister warned the little sister not to touch her kidneys. While they were playing, the little sister accidently forgot and touched her sister above the kidneys. She watched as her sister turned into a bear and ran away into the town and killed many of the people. My thought when reading this was: did the big sister want her little sister to touch her in the spot to make her turn into a bear?

            She warns the sister not to touch her there, but it could be in hopes that the little sister would be curious and touch her there anyways. So, my next thought was why would she want to be turned into a bear when she knew she would most likely kill innocent people? Then I had the idea that maybe she did not go off and kill innocent people, but the people that killed her bear lover. Maybe it was planned as revenge to make those people pay for killing her true love.

            I enjoyed the ending of the story with the arrows being able to kill but also being able to revive the four dead brothers. They decided the only safe place to live was in the stars and they became the constellations. I love astronomy and think the sky is a beautiful work of art. I enjoyed this tale for providing one tribe’s tale of explanation for the beauty in the sky.






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From the second half of the unit I focused on the story: The Youth who Joined the Deer

The story of the deer and the people really had me thinking about the relationship we have with animals. I think this is the purpose of the story after all. It speaks volumes about the beliefs and rituals of the Nlakapamuk people. When first reading the part of the story where it explains that the Deer people lived by hunting and killing each other and then reviving themselves through throwing the bones in the water, I thought this was very clever. I thought this was just a story about a group of people who had found a clever way to keep their people alive and thriving.

I also found it interesting that some of the young deer were always anxious to be killed for the benefit of the people. It seemed like it was almost a privilege to be killed and then provide food to nourish your people. It seems like a sacrifice. But then again, these people know they will be revived, so is it really a sacrifice? To sacrifice something usually entails that something must be lost in order to gain something else. But these people are not essentially losing their lives.

                The section about the rutting-season and the bucks with the deer-man’s wife was not my favorite part of the story. I felt bad that the deer-man was jealous and territorial of his wife. He did not want the younger bucks with his wife. It might have been put into the story to show the “animal instincts” of the deer to mate with multiple partners, and show a contrast between the deer and people. I was, after all, appalled at the mention of the “other younger bucks [who] came and beat him off and took his wife.” But, then I began to think that in the beginning of the story it mentioned that the man had multiple wives even before meeting his deer-wife. This can actually show a similarity between the humans and the deer.

                The ending explains that the hunting of deer is sacred and I think throughout the story it has showed the relationship between humans and deer. That the humans and deer have many similarities and the deer should be respected. When hunting, the deer’s bones must be returned to the water to be revitalized, or at least burned and really die. The bones are not to be thrown about as the deer will get offended. The ending shows the beliefs of the Nlakapamuk in the relationship between the humans and the deer.

Reading Diary Week 8: Review

For many of my Reading Diary posts I have taken small notes on each story so that I can remember each one. I think this strategy it has been beneficial when I am starting to think about the storytelling post because it provides me with a quick recap of the stories to choose from.  I have been writing the notes after I read each story to make sure I remember the details and what stood out to me for each plot, symbolism, or motif included. Most of the time the posts have been about the same length, obviously depending on how many stories were included in the reading unit. Recently, however, I have begun to just focus on specific stories in the unit. Usually this includes one for each half of the reading. So far I have done both halves of the reading for each unit so I have an A and B post for each unit. By just focusing on the one story per half reading unit, it has allowed me to really dive in deeper to the tales/stories of the unit. I will read all the stories included in the unit and then think about which one or two really stood out to me and focus on the details and depth of those. It is a different approach than when I started the reading diaries and I think it is beneficial. Both strategies are important and useful however. In the first unit I read, I read the tales of Ovid Greek mythology and it was useful to have a small summary of each story to see it all fit together. This last unit of Japanese fairy tales, included longer tales so it was more beneficial to focus on one story since it had so much more detail in its length. The dairy has helped me with my storybook posts because I read about Greek mythology in the first two units of the semester and am now having to write my storybook posts about goddesses. It is helpful to have the quick notes about the stories in order for me to use as a guide to find the specific tale I need to reference in my storybook post. I am glad that I choose to include quotes in my posts because many of them have significant meaning and is the reason they stood out to me. I enjoy the moral lessons included in many of the stories and the diary posts allow me to take a look back and be reminded of these important messages.

Week 7 Essay: Analyzing a Recurring Motif

For this week’s essay I am focusing on the reoccurring theme I have seen in two of the past units I have read. The theme is the idea of “wanting what you don’t have.”

A want button where you can press what you want, Image source: LaBLog

Last week one of my favorite stories from the Japanese FairyTale (Lang) unit was The Stonecutter. This story follows a poor stonecutter who happens upon the magical spirit of the mountain one day when he is cutting stone. He wishes he is rich and the spirit grants his wish by giving him a palace to live in. But this is not enough. When he sees a prince who has servants to shade him from the sun, he wishes to be a prince. He wants what he does not have. But this was not enough power for the prince. He wanted to have power over all the earth, so he wished to be the sun, but when the clouds covered the sun and cast the earth in shadows, he wished to be a cloud. And when the cloud stormed and destroyed the village but did not damage the mountain, he wished to be the mountain. Until, one day a stonecutter came by and began to chip at him for the stone. He then wished to be a man and he was content for the rest of his days. Through the journey, he constantly wanted what he did not have. He was never satisfied with what he had to start with until he saw that, in the end, it was what he wanted most.

This week one of my favorite stories in the unit Japanese Fairy Tales (Ozaki) was the tale entitled The Man Who Did Not Wish to Die. The man named Sentaro does not want to die and part with all of the splendors he owns in this life. He had heard tales of there being an elixir of life that would make him last forever and he decided he must have it, so he sets out to Mt. Fuji to find the hermits who possess it. In order to obtain the elixir and live forever Sentaro must become a hermit. Sentaro has been spoiled his whole life, and the reason he seeks the Elixir is in order to live this grand life forever, not a life of being cold and hungry and barefoot. So his next option to live forever is to venture to the land known as Perpetual Life where the people live forever. But, the people there have heard of Paradise, a magical place you go to only when you die. So Sentaro, who came from a land where you do die wanted to find eternal life and the people who had eternal life only wanted to die. This shows a perfect example of people wanting what they do not have. Luckily, for Sentaro it was just a dream and he soon realized that he did not want to live forever, and returned from Mt. Fuji to his land where he would eventually die.