Indian Fairy Tales Unit Story Analysis Essay: Week 12, Tricksters and Fools

In the unit ‘Indian Fairy Tales’ by Joseph Jacobs, there are a lot of stories that include the characters meant to be tricksters and fools. In ‘The Cruel Crane Outwitted', the trickster is at first the crane who tricks the fish from a drying pond to jump into his mouth on the promise that he would take them to a fuller pond and let them in there. The fish were reluctant to believe the crane at first but after some tricks they believed his words and hopped in his mouth one by one as the crane flew to the other pond and had each one as a snack. The fish were obviously the fools at this point in the tale. The crane though, greedy for more deceit tried to do the same to a crab that resided in the drying pond. The crab however, thought ahead and was able to have a plan in case the crane double crossed him. Which is smart, making him the trickster instead because the crane did end up trying to trick the crab. The crane was shown no mercy and was killed after he pleaded for his life and let the crab go into the pond. A similar tactic was shown in the fairy tale ‘The Tiger, The Brahman, and the Jackal’ where ultimately the tiger was the trickster who preyed on the brahman who was the fool. At the end of the story is where the jackal was the best trickster, much like the crab, because he turned the original trickster into a fool. The tiger was tricked back into the cage in which the brahman foolishly let him out of. Lucky for the brahman, the jackal was a ‘good trickster’. I think there are good tricksters and bad tricksters in these tales because the tricksters who trick the fools deserve to be tricked themselves and are by the ‘good tricksters’. Those are just two of the stories that I found to be similar in nature regarding tricksters and fools in this unit. There are many other fairy tales however that include a trickster and a fool and also like I was explaining, good and bad tricksters. The story of Harisarman is a good read as well in this unit because it included an ‘accidental trickster’ who gets lucky in his trickery and is never played to be a fool by a ‘good trickster’.

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