Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Interpretending similarities among ancient trickster tales
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Trickster tales have been told throughout time to convey culturally important beliefs in an entertaining way. This is demonstrated by highlighting similarities and differences in the trickster tales “How Stories Came to Earth,” “Coyote Steals Fire,” and “Master Cat.” While each of these stories share many characteristics such as anthropomorphism, utilizing cunning and deceit to achieve their goals, and sharing their gain with others.
“How Stories came to Earth” is a anthropomorphism tale about a spider named Anansi, he wanted to collect stories told by the Sky-God. The Sky-God conducted Anansi to collect the following things, python, leopard, hornets, and a fairy. In “How Stories Came to Earth” and “Coyote Steals Fire”, both Coyote and Anansi
…show more content…
In the story a cat is the only thing left to the youngest son of the miller. The cat, in hopes to please his master and show his value creates a plan in order to save himself. In his plan, Master Cat has the expectation of gaining wealth and therefore happiness for his owner through his tricks and decisive lies. Master cat shares similarities and differences with the other trickster tales by the ways he utilizes his cunningness to achieve his goals. The cat in order to fulfill his goals produces a plan. This also happens in “How Stories Came to Earth” and “Coyote Steals Fire” when the tricksters create plans using their cunningness and sly skills in hopes to obtain their goals. Differences between their plans is that in “Coyote Steals Fire” and “Master Cat” both of these plans were made on their own, while in “How Stories Came to Earth”, Anansi collaborates with his wife to make his plan successful. Also in the trickster tales each of the tricksters have their own way of using their unique skills in their own way to achieve their goals. Anansi and Master Cat both somewhat harm people in they way that they trick them. Master Cat threatens to chop up the peasant farmers if they don't lie for him and he also kills the ogre, while Anansi …show more content…
The story “Coyote Steals Fire” is a tale about how fire came to earth. The main character Coyote tricks thunder in a game of dice, which leads thunder in giving up the fire for the entire world. Coyote gave fire to the word, just like Anansi gave the stories to the world. Unlike Coyote and Anansi, Master Cat did everything for himself. In the story, “Puss in Boots” Master Cat overheard the miller’s son say, “ I'm going to eat that cat”. This is what motivated Master Cat to do all of the odd and outrageous things he did. Coyote did all of his critical thinking on his own, just like Master Cat did. Unlike Coyote and Master Cat, Anansi didn’t do his critical thinking on his own. Anansi went to his wife for help. According to the story “How Stories Came to Earth” Anansi after receiving his orders from the sky god, went to his wife for ideas on how to catch all of the creatures he needed to get the stories. Even though Coyote, Master Cat, and Anansi have similar and different ideas they are all trying to reach their overall
There is a folklore story called, “Coyote and The Monster”, iit is about a man climbing a mountain and finding a village. There is no one there, except a crying woman he finds in the last tipi. She yes a monster killed all her people, and Coyote said he would fight the monster, the next day he goes to fight monster and the wolves help him defeat the evil monster. In reward they gave Coyote a pretty woman to be his
In the story of The Thief of Always by Clive Barker, Harvey follows Rictus into the Holiday House and sees that there is dark magic there within Hood, and as the plot goes on Harvey goes to defeat Hood with the help of some special. Those are the roles of three cats, Blue-Cat, Clue-cat, and Stew-cat, where are though they are minor characters, the are vital to the story.As we go through the book the cats play a big part that helps the story make it to the end. The roles of the three cats are so important because they together advance the plot, foreshadow, and advance the themes.
Myths, folktales, legends, they have been poured upon us from a seemingly inexhaustible horn of plenty since the days of the ancient.
Furthermore, is a summarization of the main points in “The Black Cat.” “The Black Cat” is about a man who always loved animals since he was little, but as he aged he started drinking. He then tortured his favorite pet cat, Pluto after he was getting annoyed with his presence. He goes as far as gouging out its eye before he hangs it in an old tree. Later on, his house burnt down and the outline of the cat was left on the only standing wall left by the fire. After he and his wife get a new home, they soon found a new cat that looked just like the old one except it had white around its neck. The narrator starts to believe that the cat is mocking him, so one day he tries to kill the cat but his wife interferes, and he ki...
Comparing The Earth on Turtle's Back, When Grizzlies Walked Upright, And the Navajo Origin Legend
Navajo people believe that there was a group of beings on the earth before man existed here. They are referred to as the “Holy People” also known as “Dineh”. The names given to these divine beings are “First Man”, “Changing Woman”, “Spider Woman”, “Monster Slayer”, “Born of/for Water” and many others. It is believed that these holy people had many designs that where sacred and kept on spider webs, buckskin, and clouds as well as sections of the sky. Navajo legend states that when “First Man” guided the “First People” to this world they had the permission of the other “dineh” to copy these sacred images so that they would have a means to enlist the aid of the Holy people when needed. The only stipulation that was placed was that they could only be made with sand on the g...
Hence, the image of the trickster Coyote is the focal point in these two cultures, because of his/her never-ending desire to start the next story for the creation of the world and have everything right. Native American culture has a lot of dialogic perspectives in it; in the form of stories and conversations in which all humans and non-humans communicate (Irwin,2000, p39) and writers often highlight the importance of the oral cultural inheritance both as the notion of their being and as method for their writing. Coyote in traditional oral culture reminds us the semiotic component of sufferings of
He starts out by saying that he and his wife both have good hearts and both have a share of love for animals so that got pets of many different varieties. Though the narrator became quite fond of the cat more they name the cat Pluto, which is also the Roman mythological god of death and darkens. Little by little he goes in and out of madness, which some of it is alcohol induced because the narrator specifies that he would come in from his “flaunts” about town and get enraged with every pet and offered to beat his wife as well. It became really bad to where he would abuse the cat as well. One day when he picked the cat up, the cat bit him so in retaliation he gouged the cat 's eye out with a pen. The next day after he sobered up he became saddened and disgusted with his deed. The cat
“As we speak of Trickster today, you must try to blow life into the image, to imagine Trickster as life energy, to allow Trickster to step out of the verbal photograph we create . . . . Because trickster stories still have power: the power to bring us to laughter, the power to baffle us, the power to make us wonder and think and, like Trickster, just keep going on” (Bright).
...at the hands of his master. The mutilation of its eye, hanging it to death from a tree and killing his wife, which had shown the cat love. There are two interpretations you can take away from this story, the logic of guilt or supernatural fantasy. Which conclusion will you take?
Throughout time, mankind has forged stories and legends to explain the unknown. As years went along the stories and tall tales were passed down to each generation. Each recount of the inherited stories are always told differently, how the story was told usually depended on the person and their particular region of habitance. Thus leading to hundreds of different versions of a single story told throughout the world, written and told by different people. Not only are these stories told as pure entertainment, they serve as wise life lessons and set examples for children when they were eventually introduced to society. These stories are so prominent in human history that even to this day the same stories that were told to children centuries ago
From this story we can see the black cat bring some bad or negative thing to narrator’s family, in our life we should leave those evil things away to keep our life be safety. And also we should keep our mind be clear, don't let other unclear or bad things to affect our mind and our life. Also we should try to do some positive thing, go to some positive activity. Avoid same thing happen in our life, just keep away from that negative
A Folktale is described as the general term for the verbal, spiritual, and material aspects of any homogeneous preliterate or subliterate culture. These stories have been around and past down generations for thousands of years. Much controversy surrounds Folktales in determining the authenticity of the story. Many cultures strongly believe in their history and the tales that come along with it. On the other hand, many skeptics are headstrong in their beliefs that such characters featured in these folktales cease to exist and are told as entertainment and a way to promote strong ethical values in the generations to come. Folktales fall into the non-fiction genre of literature, which may cause confusion with some people considering we were all
In the stories, “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” both narrators have a misguided perception that induces their senses to confuse reality with delusions. This misguided perception is brought on by the abnormal psychology of both men. This is a common theme in Poes’ stories. In “The Black Cat” the narrator feels a sense of fright and disgust when reviewing the attached behavior of the second cat. Poe’s description of the second cat is eerily similar to that of the first cat, Pluto. As author Magdalen Wing-Chi Ki states, “the narrator is convinced that it ‘must be’ Pluto on account of two things: it follows him around in the hope of becoming his absolute partner, and one of its eyes is gone.” A rational person understands that it is impossible for the second cat to be Pluto, but the narrator is so misguided that he believes this inconceivable delusion. This mistaken fantasy fuels the narrator’s madness, giving him more evidence that mu...
Zipes, Jack. Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk & Fairy Tales. Revised and expanded ed. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1979. Print