Reading Diary (Indian Fairy Tales Unit): Week 12

I chose to read from the Indian Fairy Tales Unit by Joseph Jacobs this week. Accessed here.

The fairy tale 'The Broken Pot' was quite interesting. I thought that the young boy had a great imagination going from a pot of rice to thinking up to kicking his wife and thus kicking the rice bowl. At first, his intentions of saving the rice in the pot made sense in terms of saving and trading up. Much like how adults try to sell commodities for other commodities of more value leading to a goal of gaining something worth a lot more than they start with. The boy lost me when he started thinking of how the rice would ultimately lead to gaining a wife then a child and then one day he would get the child to run to him and the kid would get too close to a horse and then he would kick his wife for allowing this, and this made him mad enough to actually kick the bowl of rice that got him started on this fixation to begin with. So now no rice, no goats, no cows, no bison, no horses, no house with wings, no daughter to marry, no son to be had, no kicking to be done to wife. I thought this was interesting and has a greater meaning that would be cool to bring out in a possible storytelling post this week.

The fairy tale 'The Cruel Crane Outwitted' had a surprising ending with a twist. At first, it is the crane that is the evil-doer and outwits the fish -even though the fish are suspecting at first-. Then he goes back for more, making him greedy after eating all those fish upon taking them to the other pond. Greed gets the best of him I think since the crab ultimately leads to the cranes death. I do not think the crane was too smart when he agreed to have the crab hold onto his neck to get to the pond, maybe he was too entranced with the possibility of eating him and was not thinking clearly. The crab was smart and had a backup plan in case the crane double crossed him but he kills the crane anyways after the crane surrenders so he doesn't have much character. The bystander watching all this go down is titled 'genius' in the tree, maybe because he is set away from this madness?

In the fairy tale 'The Tiger, The Brahman, and the Jackal' the jackal comes to the Brahmans rescue by acting too stupid to understand the situation he was put in and the tiger is stupid enough to get back in the cage. So perhaps it was the Tigers stupidity and the jackals cleverness that helped the Brahman out of being tiger good. I think the stupidest one here though is the Brahman because he went on this journey and CAME BACK to the tiger even though he knew the tiger planned on eating him after he let him out the cage.

-I like how each fairy tale has an animal incorporated into it somehow. Some fairy tales from this unit are centered around talking animals, some only have animals in the background, but it is cool to see how there is a theme of animals that show up regardless such as goats or snakes.