Starting Assumptions for
Week 7
|| February 21, 2009 at 4:30pm
For this week, I am certainly entering into unfamiliar territory. I am not very familiar with specific Indian or Japanese food selections, but I do like eating rice with broccoli or shrimp when it comes to Asian food in general. My exposure to Indian and Japanese culture and history is rather limited. I think I have seen a couple of independent movies from India and a little bit of Japanese anime, I particularly remember some anime that had a sort of New Age feel to them. My initial desire would have been to read the Indian unit given that I would like to explore Hindu mythology but I've decided to go with the Japanese unit given that there is not any significant mythology related material in the Indian unit. Besides, I was a big fan of Nintendo and the popular video games associated with it as a teenager, so I am sort of curious about the tanuki character.
Storytelling for Week 7:
Escaping Captivity || March 3, 2009 at
10:30am
Many days ago, a new creature came ashore. My family of monkeys didn't know what to make of it, so we came down out of the trees while it slept. It turns out that the creature is called a turtle. I found this out when I decided to move my hand across it's back, for it suddenly clamped down upon my hand with it's mouth. I tried with all my might to remove my hand, but it would not let go of me. My family, seeing this, retreated back to the trees while I had to fend for myself.
Then, the turtle said to me: "Be at peace, friend, and I will take you to a mythical land down under the sea."
Seeing that I could not escape, I consented to the journey as I crawled upon the turtle's back. Under the water we went. We eventually arrived at a royal palace that abounded with joyous sounds of celebration. Soon, I was being treated as royalty, for everyone tended to my every need. As great as all this was, I began to miss my family and friends.
So, I would occasionally withdraw into the darkness to grieve my absence from home.
As I sat in the darkness, a jelly-fish came up to me. It still had it's shell during this time, but that would later change. I am not sure if it came to console me or if it simply wanted to taunt me, but it informed me of my pending demise. I didn't know it at the time, but the turtle had been sent to obtain the liver of a monkey so that the queen could eat it. It goes without saying that I did not like this at all. So, I asked the jelly-fish what I could have done to deserve this most unfortunate fate.
Well, it turns out that only a monkey's liver can save their queen and I just happen to be at the wrong place and time.
It was one thing to be homesick, but it's a much different thing to ponder one's pending demise. I spent the next couple of days pretending to be happy, but actually I was plotting my escape. My captors didn't seem to be very smart, so I figured that they could be easily fooled. I soon came up with a plan and misled them by saying, "I left my liver back home on a bush. It tends to rain a lot, so the liver will be ruined if I don't return to remove it. Someone should take me back so that I can return with it."
I had to sell my plan by putting on some drama, but the Queen's advisers finally gave in. They had the turtle return me to dry land to get my liver from the bush, for I didn't give them any reason to suspect deception. When the turtle and I arrived upon dry land, I quickly darted up the trees and told my monkey friends and family about my ordeal under the sea. They then descended upon the poor turtle, stripped him of his shell, and taunted him as he struggled towards the shoreline.
Personally, I felt they were a bit harsh with the turtle but I was just glad to be home again. I heard that the turtle eventually got his shell back, but the Queen condemned the jelly-fish for having helped me. She had it's shell forever removed and it now goes without a shield. There's no word on the fate of the Queen though, hopefully they found an alternative way to save her life.
Original Story: The Monkey and the Jelly-Fish
Image Information: Vervet Monkey. photo by Peter v. Sengbusch. Weblink
Author's Note: I retold the story from the perspective of the monkey. I summarized many details and cut back on the dialogue.
Essay for Week 7:
Tricksters
& Fools || March 3, 2009 at
12:30pm
In The Monkey and the Jelly-Fish, we are given at least two characters that display the characteristics of both a trickster and a fool. The turtle tricks the foolish monkey into going with him to a mythical land down under the sea. The monkey, however, then tricks his foolish captors into allowing him to return home in order to retrieve his liver. Once they return, however, he quickly escapes to the trees. The monkeys remove the foolish turtle's shell and taunt him as he escapes to the sea.
In The Crab and The Monkey, we are given more examples of trickery and foolishness. The monkey initially tricks the crab into exchanging some it's rice for a previously eaten kernal of sweet red kaki fruit, but later it discovers that he himself was fooled, for the crab grew a red kaki tree from the kernal. The crab could not, however, reach the fruit itself. So, the monkey tricks the crab into allowing him to gather fruit for the two. He then ate or gathered all the good fruit for himself while tossing down the rotten or unripened fruits to the crab. The crab, however, then tricks the monkey by challenging him to do some somersaults. This resulted in many of the good fruits falling to the ground and the crab quickly stored them within it's home.
In The Magic Kettle and the other tanuki (racoon-dog) stories, we are given examples of a different kind of trickery that involves shape-shifting. The tanuki has the ability to change it's shape and form into a variety of other things. This fools the unsuspecting into believing that they are something that they are not. This particular story is rather light-hearted in that the tanuki uses it's ability for good or playful reasons. Other stories show the tanuki using it's shape-shifting ability in a much more negative light.
Taken together as a whole, it seems to me that these stories highlight the interdependence between the trickster and the fool; for, it is really difficult to have one without the other. Sometimes trickery can be fun or even useful. Other times it can be really destructive and bad. The trickster tends to be smarter or more clever than the fool, but the fool tends to be more innocent or trustworthy. Characters displaying both traits tend to be more versatile in their overall roles.
Image Information: Japanese website. Weblink.
Famous Last Words for Week
7 || March 3, 2009 at 1:30pm
Overall, I really enjoyed this week's
reading assignments. I especially liked The
Two
Frogs, The
Husband
of
the
Rat's Daughter, and the Stonecutter.
Each
of
them appealed to me in different ways, but basically it
comes
down to the way people interact with the world around
them. What sort
of wrong assumptions do they have? What sort of moral
lesson is the
story seeking to convey? For things like this, these three
stories are
great examples. Unfortunately, none of the stories were
particularly
easy to renarrate, but neither have I been all that
inspired or
motivated to do so. In fact, that brings me to my
storybook.
I continue to get some really wonderful feedback on how it is progressing and I have really enjoyed putting everything together. Yet, some concern continues to be raised about my classmates ability to understand the message and language of my storybook. So, further revisions are needed as I explicitly define my terms and go to great length to insure that others will be able to follow my train of thought. Further, I have had to abandon the whole homily concept given that this course is solely interested in the ability to renarrate stories. My first story, specifically, happens to be the longest one of them all given the particular passage that I am retelling. Thus, there was no room for a homily, commentary, or hardly anything beyond that.
In the end, I am not going to lie. This has been a really frustrating experience for me. Yet, not all is lost. It has also been an instructive process as I continue to develop my writing skills. An example that continues to annoy me relates to the semi-colon use. There are ways of using the semicolon that I have long considered legitimate, but apparently this is not the case. It has also been interesting to learn how to use proper grammatical marks when quoting characters in different circumstances. Regardless as to how the semester continues to develop, I have thoroughly enjoyed the first several weeks of class.
I continue to get some really wonderful feedback on how it is progressing and I have really enjoyed putting everything together. Yet, some concern continues to be raised about my classmates ability to understand the message and language of my storybook. So, further revisions are needed as I explicitly define my terms and go to great length to insure that others will be able to follow my train of thought. Further, I have had to abandon the whole homily concept given that this course is solely interested in the ability to renarrate stories. My first story, specifically, happens to be the longest one of them all given the particular passage that I am retelling. Thus, there was no room for a homily, commentary, or hardly anything beyond that.
In the end, I am not going to lie. This has been a really frustrating experience for me. Yet, not all is lost. It has also been an instructive process as I continue to develop my writing skills. An example that continues to annoy me relates to the semi-colon use. There are ways of using the semicolon that I have long considered legitimate, but apparently this is not the case. It has also been interesting to learn how to use proper grammatical marks when quoting characters in different circumstances. Regardless as to how the semester continues to develop, I have thoroughly enjoyed the first several weeks of class.