Essay Week 4: Humans to Animals

This week when reading the Arabian Nights unit, I noticed a common theme with many of the stories Scheherazade was telling in order to save her life: people being turned into animals as punishment for their wrongdoings.

In the Story of the First Old Man and of the Hind, the husband has an even wicked wife who despised his mother and son. He had to leave for a year, and in this time, the wife practiced witchcraft in order to turn their son and slave into a calf and cow. Luckily, when it came time to slaughter the calf and cow, the man was stricken by the tears of the cow and the loyalty of the calf to lay by his feet. The man spared their lives. A fairy living on the land told the man of his son and slave being turned into the calf and cow by his wife and requested that if she turn them back into their human form that the wife be punished equally. The wife was then turned into a hind (deer). The story explains that a hind was chosen as the animal to take form because it was not as dreadful looking or misbehaved, and therefore the the family could still keep her close by. 

First Old man with his wife the Hind, source: blogspot

The next story in the unit, The Story of the Two Black Dogs, also included two brothers being turned into dogs after they betrayed their brother. Their brother had been nothing but kind to them and once he married a lovely woman and was very happy with his life the brothers became jealous. They tried to drown him and his wife by pushing them overboard a ship. To the man’s surprise, his wife was a fairy who rescued them and requested the two brothers be killed. The man said he did not want them killed, but the fairy wanted them to be punished so she transformed them into two black dogs where they would remain in that shape for ten years. It does not say why dogs were chosen as the animal as it does in the story of the hind, but I believe it was for much of the same reason. In the two brothers being dogs, they were allowed to remain by heir brother’s side but still had their punishment of living their next ten years as animals.

In the story of the Young King of the Black Isles, a young king was betrayed by his wife whom did not love him. She was a wicked enchantress that hated her husband for requesting she stop mourning the loss of one of their slaves who she truly loved. In her rage, she destroyed the land of the Black Isles and turned the people of the town into fish. “The fish of four colours which are in it are the different races who lived in the town.”  In this story, the people did not do anything to deserve being turned into animals, but the people suffered the punishment the wife wished to bring on the King of destroying the land he governed.