Throughout history, every culture has had many tales featuring prominent characters designed to pass on a very important message. These stories help young and old alike understand human nature and develop proper social norms within their society. They feature a wide variety of topics, most teaching very important lessons about life. Many were created for oppressed people in order to help overcome fear and inspire hope. Although most were written because of a hard lesson learned, they now have the great effect of passing on knowledge and smiles to the audience.
Almost all traditional cultures tell stories featuring tricksters. For instance, Coyote, Hare, and Raven are common cunning characters across North America. African trickster stories star the Tortoise, Anansi the Spider, Brer Rabbit, Zomo the Hare or Eshu, the roguish messenger of the gods in Yoruba (Nigeria) legends. In European and Chinese folklore, Fox often plays the part. Monkeys are tricksters in the Far East, and among smaller creatures, Wasp and Mantis appear as well. The trickster character is used to show the effect of someone living on the edge of the rules, often crossing the line between right and wrong for selfish reasons.
Trickster characters have long been traditional in China’s folklore, fables, mythology and theater. One of the most famous tales is that of the monkey king from the famous Ming Dynasty novel “Journey to the West.” The monkey king joins a devout monk on a quest to retrieve holy Buddhist scriptures, and bring them back from India to China. The monkey king is said to have been born from a stone, fertilized by the wind, rain, and sun, and so contains within himself all of the four elements of the universe. Essentially a t...
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...le to get away from the problem at hand, the message sent at the end of the tales are drastically different. The Monkey King, at the end, gained no status but received knowledge and enlightenment. The lesson taught was that it is fine to be a little mischievous, as long as your intentions are protagonist. Brer Rabbit taught us that when stuck in a bad situation, playing off your enemy’s common behaviors will allow creative solutions. Hermes’ story really fails to teach anything, except for the bad lesson that as long as your parents are powerful and rich, you can get away with anything.
Although each culture in this world is different, they all share one common thread, the trickster in stories. They are often used to inspire hope in those who feel as if they are in a weaker position, and help build the notion that creative thinking is the real power.
Stories are a means of passing on information, acting as a medium to transport cultural heritage and customs forward into the future. In his essay titled "You'll Never Believe What Happened," King says that, "The truth about stories is that that's all we are” (King Essay 2). Contained within this statement is a powerful truth: without stories, a society transcending the limitations of time could not exist. Cultures might appear, but they would inevitably die away without a means of preservation. Subsequent generations would be tasked with creating language, customs, and moral laws, all from scratch. In a way, stories form the core of society's existence.
I will also be showing how fairytales can sometimes have extended meanings and how they can teach quit a lot. I will have also shown how Fairytales can serve cultural functions to explain a society to itself, revealing its own mechanisms and taboos in highly symbolic language, images.
Fairy tales are good. Santa Claus and Snow White are good. On the other hand, many stories we consider to be of cultural value are not good. If we treat them like fairy tales – fine! If we try to find a hidden message or a deeper sense – a waste of time!
Storytellers were often given the honored title of “Hair Twister”, and were believed to have the ability to hear the heartbeat of Father Sky and Mother Earth. Although the stories from one tribe might greatly differ from another, Hair Twisters from every tribe focused on common themes such as the origin of all things, the general well-being of the community, individual responsibility, and honoring the environment. Stories also spanned tribal boundaries by sharing a common cast that included characters such as Father Sky, Mother Earth, and the crafty trickster Coyote. Hair Twisters were known to incorporate music and dance into their stories to maximize listener involvement and to create a deep and memorable experience. “Storytelling for Indians is not something that happens in the past,” asserts Nez Perce/Osage editor Penn. “Its meaning and importance are present and even future” (Davis).
Every story has characters and their roles reveal much about the meaning and values of the story; additionally, the role that they play can serve as a representation of different ...
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
In conclusion it is evident that the power of storytelling is a form of social control because many people look to the stories that are rooted in their culture and they use it to formulate their dominant fantasies and they also use stories to help them identify both others and themselves. Therefore the one who tells stories holds great power and the stories that he or she chooses to tell help reinforce certain dominant fantasies.
For centuries, children stories have been a valuable tool in teaching lessons and morals. Like most stories that one was read as a child, there lies a life lesson that the author is trying to portray. Whether it was told orally like the story Beowulf or written by an author like Chaucer who wrote The Canterbury Tales, there are life lessons that are being taught through the characters and their challenges that they endure.
Fairy tales portray wonderful, elaborate, and colorful worlds as well as chilling, frightening, dark worlds in which ugly beasts are transformed into princes and evil persons are turned to stones and good persons back to flesh (Guroian). Fairytales have long been a part of our world and have taken several forms ranging from simple bedtime stories to intricate plays, musicals, and movies. However, these seemingly simple stories are about much more than pixie dust and poisoned apples. One could compare fairytales to the new Chef Boyardee; Chef Boyardee hides vegetables in its ravioli while fairytales hide society’s morals and many life lessons in these outwardly simple children stories. Because of this fairytales have long been instruments used to instruct children on the morals of their culture. They use stories to teach children that the rude and cruel do not succeed in life in the long run. They teach children that they should strive to be kind, caring, and giving like the longsuffering protagonists of the fairytale stories. Also, they teach that good does ultimately defeat evil. Fairy tales are not just simple bedtime stories; they have long been introducing cultural moral values into young children.
“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).
Fantasy writer Philip Pullman says, “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” Stories have been central to how human history has been shaped and remembered. On a grand scale, stories have been a way to pass down culture and remember history. On a smaller scales, they have been used to spend an entertaining evening or- often in many cultures, put a child to bed. While the power of a stories is one that has gone generally unnoticed, William Cronon urgently calls us to pay attention to stories. As Cronon argues in “A Place for Stories”, the manner in which a story is told influences what futures generations will both learn and recall on their own.
Fairy tales have been part of our lives ever since we were young children. We all either grew up watching Disney renditions of fairy tales, or we had storybooks filled with vivid pictures of a tale. Fairy tales are so important in our culture that it would be difficult to find someone who has not heard of Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, or other fairy tale protagonists. Interestingly enough, fairy tales have been a very integral part of Western culture since the time they were written. Fairy tale writers, such as Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers, revolutionized culture in the 17th and 18th centuries with their writings. Not only did these writers write these tales for entertainment, but they also accomplished to influence the
The character is emphasising the moral and educational value of stories in human development and understanding by saying that there is always something to learn from stories, even when they are retold repeatedly.
This article, is arguing about the cultural history on how the poor and the lower class would tell stories. These stories still affect our society today. This article states that fairy tales at first were meant for adults because children could not read. An example is Brothers Grimm, where “Weber argues that fairy tales can tell us a great deal about the real conditions in the world of those who told and those who heard the tales” (344). It also explains how the Grimm’s brother changed society with their stories of cruelty.
When you where a kid did your parents ever tell you stories about your culture or about your family’s values? Chances are they where telling you a folk tale. Folk tales are stories passed down usually by word of mouth but often they are written down. Folk tales teach a valuable life lesson while entertaining the reader or in some cases the listener. This essay will give examples of three folk tales and go into depth on how they teach lessons and still remain entertaining for children and even adults.