How Stories Came To Earth, Coyote Steals Fire, And Master Cat

Tricksters are very important to many stories. They are the energy of mischief in the three tales we read, which are: How Stories Came to Earth, Coyote Steals Fire, and Master Cat. The tricksters add a desire to change to the story. Some of the elements in these trickster tales are anthropomorphism, cleverness, and the use of brain over brawn. These elements are often in stories, you just may not recognize them immediately when you read.
Anthropomorphism is giving non-human characters human qualities. In How Stories Came to Earth it’s shown various times, “After following the tracks of the leopard, spider dug a very deep pit. He covered it over with the branches of the trees and came home. Returning in the very early morning” , this quote is

In How Stories Came to Earth, the spider Anansi says “I tell you that my wife, Aso, is a liar, for she says that you are longer than this palm branch and I say that you are not.” This shows how clever Anansi is because the python will also become curious and lay next to the branch to find out the answer. Therefore, he had the chance to tie the python to the branch and capture him. Another example of how clever tricksters are is when the coyote in Coyote Steals Fire takes off the outer part of his body and tricks Thunder into thinking he was still in it. He spoke in a voice that sounded close, but was truly far away. Thunder threw the rock of fire at the coyote attempting to kill him, but it was just his skin as his spirit was elsewhere. The rock shattered and the coyote won the fire as he had wanted. In Master Cat, the cat shows his cleverness by playing dead in a field of wheat with a pouch around his neck. The pouch contains food, and young animals will crawl in thinking the cat is dead. After they enter the pouch, he had the opportunity to trap them and use the animals to his advantage . Tricksters are unquestionably clever and it is easily seen throughout stories containing

Most Tricksters in stories tend to be on the smaller side, so the Brain over Brawn characteristic is common. In the Ashanti Legend How stories came to Earth a small spider takes down 4 of the world’s most difficult obstacles in order to retrieve stories to share with everyone. An example of this is when the small spider strapped the python against a long stick using his wit, by accusing his wife of being a liar to trick Onini the python. “Onini, the python, said ‘Come and place the branch next to me and we will see if she is a liar.’ And so, Anansi put the palm branch next to the python’s body, and saw the large snack stretch himself alongside it. Anansi then bound the python to the branch with the string-creeper and wound it over and over- nwenene! Nwenene! Nwenene!- until he came to the head.’ In the story Coyote Steals Fire by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, a tricky Coyote fooled a sky God named Thunder by removing his skin and hiding in the woods so he would not find him, and then tricking him into throwing the stone which contained fire and breaking it. The cunning house cat in Master Boots, by Charles Perrault, tricked a whole town into giving their property to his master by threatening them and eating an Ogre. “If you do not say that the fields you are mowing belong to the Marquis de Carabas, each and every one of you will be cut into little