King Shahrayar In The Thousand And One Nights

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Recommended: Issues of power in literature

The Thousand and One Nights is a collection of stories within a story that introduces us to King Shahrayar. In a quick summary, King Shahrayar is originally considered to be a good king, but after his wife starts to involve herself in adulterous behavior, he executes her and vows to himself that he will never be deceived by women as long as he shall live. King Shahrayar does this by marrying a different virgin every night, only to have her killed that next morning. During this time, the kingdom is filled with dead women whom have been victims of King Shahrayar and their morning parents. It is only until the king’s loyal vizier’s (assistant to the king) daughter, Shahrazad, volunteers to marry the king in attempt to teach him a couple lessons. …show more content…

The major themes that we see in the overall story are: the influence of storytelling, power, and questioning human life and experience. In this story the influence of storytelling is by far the most important theme. This theme happens to be the whole reason for why Shahrazad is telling these stories. Shahrazad would not be telling King Shahrayar these stories if she didn’t believe that it would influence him to become a better ruler and to become a better person. She spends a lot of time reciting these stories and in the end it all pays off because by the end of the story he does not kill her. King Shahrayar actually allows her to live and with that he welcomes her as queen. In this story power is the second most important theme. From the very beginning of the story, King Shahrayar is by far relishing in his power. King Shahrayar shows how much power he has over his kingdom by how he reacted to his first wife’s infidelity. The king’s power hungry persona is greatly affected by Shahrazad’s storytelling and the final outcome of the story has the king ultimately questioning his antics. The final major theme that we notice in this story is the theme of questioning human life and experience. Much like the first two themes, the theme of questioning human life and experience is greatly affected by Shahrazad’s storytelling. With each story, King Shahrayar is welcomed with new thoughts about how to be a good ruler and how to be a good person. The stories that Shahrazad tells the kind has him questioning his past experiences and what human life is all about. All of these small stories talk about love, death, happiness, and sadness; along with the questions about how we are able to live in a world that contains both good and

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