For thousands of years, across incredibly diverse cultural, religious, and societal systems, people have created tales of intriguing trickster figures. The stories of these character’s exploits were told and retold, passed down through the oral tradition to the following generations. These tales are told primarily to amuse the audience, as the trickster’s actions are typically both hilarious and shocking, but the folktales serve an even greater purpose. The duplicitous tomfoolery and irreverence of most tricksters highlight the culture’s most vital social values and focuses attention on the nature and importance of those value’s. According the Joseph Campbell in An Open Life, a trickster “…breaks in, just as the unconscious does, to trip up the rational situation. He’s both a fool and someone who’s beyond the system…The mind structures a lifestyle, and…the trickster represents another whole range of possibilities.” In their original context the actions of a trickster have dual meanings, those within the story and those conveyed to the audience. In this essay I will explore, the paradox of the West African and Afro-American trickster Anansi the Spider, whose existence as a literary figure resulted far more heroism than within the stories …show more content…
themselves. Anansi the Spider is a character created by the Twi-speaking peoples of West Africa, the Ashanti and other groups within the Akan.
The Akan are a culturally homogeneous people with rich sacred histories that were originally conveyed through oral tradition. The core bases of Akan society are the beliefs in a Supreme Being and a devotion to the ancestor spirits. This Supreme Being is Nyame, the creator god, giver of rain, and the author of life and death. He is the source of power for all other divinities and nature spirits, known as the abosom, and is to be respected by all creatures. Although the abosom were worshipped, the Akan primarily viewed them as intermediaries between the people and Nyame (Doty,
110-111). The other major element of the Akan belief system was ancestor worship. The ancestors are symbols of the Akan people as a whole and are the owner’s of the land. They represent prosperity, fertility, virtue, and the cultural institutions of both the Akan as a whole and their individual nation. The people derive their meaning from the ancestors and the ancestors from the people. Acknowledging this, it appears that the Akan have two vital aspects shaping their identity. Nyame is primarily the ruler of the physical and spiritual realms, but the ancestors are also a foundation of Akan life and the guides of their descendants. To the Akan, Nyame and the ancestors are for more than a religion; they are the system that controls every element of the people’s existence. To truly understand Anansi, one must comprehend the world in which the Anansesem were birthed, and the potential disruption that a trickster figure could have brought to the status quo (Doty, 112). Although Anansi was acknowledged within the religious aspects of Ashanti life, most of the Anansesem, or Anansi Stories, were typically viewed as fictional by both the storyteller and the audience. These tales were much loved by the community. Amongst the displaced peoples of West Africa, who were stolen or purchased from their homeland, elements of their original mythology and traditions remained even centuries later. Anansesem changed among the diaspora, to suite the demands of their enslavement and to incite different emotions among the audience members. However, at the core, the character remained the same. Anansi’s duplicitous and self-serving nature exhibited few traditional heroic qualities. Nor did he exhibit the respect towards Nyame or the ancestors that their position demanded. Anansi’s exact role in the spiritual realm differs in each Akan nation, and even from story to story told be the same individual. In some he is Nyame’s relative, in others Anansi created man rather than Nyame, and in a few he is wiser than all other beings. “Anansi and Nyame are related by blood, by action, and by characteristics, yet they are definitely two separate entities. Nyame is the object of veneration; Anansi is not. Nyame's actions inspire ritual; Anansi's do not. Nyame is considered the provider for the nations; Anansi is not. Nyame is the Great Spider; Anansi is perverting sub-alter-ego” (Doty, 112). Time and again, the stories present Anansi as attempting to imitate Nyame, usurp the honor that the Supreme Being is due, or infringe upon his sovereignty. This infringement is most clear in Anansi’s irreverent approach to Death, over which only Nyame is allowed any power. One tale in particular incapsulates Anansi’s typical interactions with the concept. In this story, Anansi is walking in the bush and comes across a house in front of which sat an old man. The old man was unresponsive to Anansi’s questions, so, in his typical manner, the spider entered the home and ate all the man’s food. Anansi returned to the old man’s residence multiple times so as to steal more food. Eventually, he realized that it would be easier if someone he trusted would live in the house and prepare him food. He brought his eldest daughter to the still unmoving old man and wed them, without either party’s consent. The next day he returned to find his daughter nothing but bones in the fire and the old man furious. It was revealed that the man was the personification of Death, and that Anansi had repeatedly disrespected him. After a struggle and a few tense moments, Anansi was able to escape Death’s clutches and flee. Anansi learned nothing from the encounter, and despite losing his daughter and a source of food, suffered relatively little (Michael Auld). In the Akan belief system, while his disrespect of the elderly and theft of food is already the height of disrespectfulness, it is Anansi’s flight from Death that is of even greater concern. Only Nyame, the ruler of life and death, has any right to control death. He created death to be an unavoidable fact of existence, but Anansi used Death for his own purposes and, by doing so, mocked Nyame’s ultimate sovereignty (Doty, 113). Additionally, Anansi showed no respect for Akan society, even those to whom he was closest. He repeatedly fools his friends, neighbors, and family in order to pleasure himself and fulfill his own selfish desires. He steals his closest friends fiancée, leaves his wife and children to die in some stories, and regularly breaks his communities trust. During famines he will gorge himself on the food storage, and beat Efu, the nature spirit who brought about rain, to death hoping it would cause more rain. He deceives his community so often that, Akan storytellers comment: "Woe to one who would put his trust in Anansi-a sly, selfish, and greedy person" (in Barker and Sinclair 1972: 25). Anansesem are tales of the acts and reactions of a figure who represents both “primal creativity and pathological destructiveness, childish innocence and self-absorption.” (Abrahams, 155). Even when Anansi is assisting an individual or village he does so for the award and recognition. Despite this, many of his selfish actions benefited the Akan. One of Anansi’s selfish tricks resulted in the introduction of wisdom to humanity. He stole all the wisdom of the world and placed in a container which he then attempted to carry to the top of a tree. He hoped to store it there and keep it for himself, hiding it from all people. As Anansi struggled up the tree with the pot in his arms, his son watched and eventually suggested that his father tie the container to his back. Anansi was horrified when he realized that this wise suggestion indicated that he had failed to steal all wisdom and, in a fit a rage, he threw the pot on the ground. After it broke, the four winds scattered the wisdom to the people. The wisdom benefitted humanity, but Anansi only allowed that to happen when his own plans were thwarted. According to William Doty, Anansi differs from other Trickster figures, each of whom has moments in which they assist humanity out of compassion and curiosity. This is not so with West African Tricksters, particularly Anansi. “Ananse is not a culture-hero. He certainly is not a paradigm of virtue; to the contrary, his actions are exceedingly antisocial. He fosters disharmony in the group and in his family; he eats others' food; his actions contradict the ideal of solidarity expressed by the Akan. Why, then, are his tales so popular” (117-118)? Roger Abrahams suggests that Anansi, and other African tricksters, are so loved because the very concept is so absurd to the Akan people. Theirs is a collectivist culture, in which community is continually celebrated and the ancestors defined what it meant to exist. Suggesting that a sane character would act in such a self-focused anti-communal manner was absurd to the point of hilarity. A trickster’s actions represented to the listeners exactly how a reasonable adult would not act and the tales would be told in a humorous manner so as to incite laughter.
The theme of Dark Romanticism is greatly portrayed throughout Edgar Allen Poe’s one of many famous short stories “Hop Frog”. This literary genre is founded on the idea of looking at a society from a dark perspective. It is based on the idea that the evil of this world lies only in the hands of man himself. The movement accentuates the notion that courage, determination, and ratiocination reach its heights when the thirst of revenge is at bay. This short story narrates a tale about Hop Frog’s schemed revenge against the myriad of taunts from the king and his seven ministers. The characters of the story “Hop Frog” highlight key elements of the Dark Romantic Movement by displaying the baleful and unforgivable nature of man.
While both detectives from “Chee’s Witch” and “Devil in a Blue Dress” have exceptional knowledge about their community, Easy still struggles to solve the case because of the racial tension within the white community while Chee solves the case free of racial conflict. Both stories demonstrate how racial tension and identity play an important role in a detective’s success. A contrast and comparison between the detectives in the play “devil in a blue dress” to his community is as follows. Firstly, from the novel, we can tell that both Easy and his community members view and treat the white man as different species from themselves. Easy and other members of the society are quick to point out a white man from a mile off and not only by use of the skin colour but from other intermediate factors such as the smell or dressing.
Many people, no matter their age or background, find the trickster figure to be intriguing. Karl Jung says archetypes surface in cultural and religious literature all over the world because of what he calls the collective unconsciousness, what connects all humans and cultures, so it is not surprising that the trickster is an archetype that surfaces in many stories. Even in our own culture we see depictions of the trickster in characters like Brier Rabbit and Wily Coyote. In this essay I will describe what a trickster is using the information I learned in class and discuss the role of the trickster in Raven and the African and African-American stories we discussed. Even though every trickster is unique to its culture, all tricksters share certain
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” utilize character responsibilities to create a sinister plot. For Hawthorne, protagonist Young Goodman Brown must leave his wife at home while he partakes in a night journey. For Poe, ancillary Fortunato covets a pretentious manner towards his wine tasting skills, and after being ‘challenged’ decides to prove his expertise by sampling Amontillado. Hawthorne and Poe showcase a theme of darkness but differ in their approach to the setting, characters, and fate of entrapment.
Hesiod’s Theogony and the Babylonian Enuma Elish are both myths that begin as creation myths, explaining how the universe and, later on, humans came to be. These types of myths exist in every culture and, while the account of creation in Hesiod’s Theogony and the Enuma Elish share many similarities, the two myths differ in many ways as well. Both myths begin creation from where the universe is a formless state, from which the primordial gods emerge. The idea of the earth and sky beginning as one and then being separated is also expressed in both myths.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most celebrated literary authors of all time, known for writing very suspenseful, dramatic short stories and a poet; is considered as being a part of the American Romantic Movement, and a lesser known opinion is he is regarded as the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. Most recognized for his mystery and macabre, a journey into the dark, ghastly stories of death, deception and revenge is what makes up his reputation. The short story under analysis is a part of his latter works; “The Cask of Amontillado”, a story of revenge takes readers into the mind of the murderer.
“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).
Egyptian religion is polytheistic. The gods are present in the form of elements of life – natural forces and human condition. Greek religion is also polytheistic. Like Egypt, the Greek gods exist to represent different aspects of life, but they also play an active social role in the people’s lives. In Greek mythology, the gods have feelings and flaws as the normal people do. Greek Gods have even had children and committed adultery with people. The Egyptian gods interact more with each other than with the people. They interact with the people more on a supernatural level. Osiris, the Egyptian god of agriculture and afterlife, judges people when they die. Amon, the king of gods, is hidden inside the ruler (This “king of gods” title was not always so as the popularity of Aton, the sun-disk rose through the reformation of Pharaoh Akhenaton in 1369-1353 BC). Hebrew religion, being monotheistic, had only one all-powerful god. Instead of being believed by the people to be somewhere in the world, the Hebrew god was completely separated from the physical universe. Abraham in Canaan (about 1800 BC) is the first known practicer of monotheism. As for monotheistic resemblance in other cultures, the Greek god Zeus is seen as a leader of the other gods, but not independent of them. Akhenaton’s short-lived reform of Egyptian religion reveres Aton as the source of all life. This is the earliest religious expression of a belief in a sole god of the universe. Akhenaton’s challenge to the power of the priests did not last beyond his own lifetime.
When they first find the old man, the villagers claim that “he’s an angel” (Marquez 1). There is no denying the man’s divinity but he seems to represents much more than your average angel. In fact, the old man doesn’t resemble the typical image of an angel at all. Rather than being a young and pure angel, he is “much too human” with his “unbearable smell”. His angelic wings are even “strewn with parasites” with mistreated feathers (2). This contrasting imagery, however, doesn’t completely undermine the old man’s divinity; rather it draws attention to his lackluster appearance. The disappointments we feel towards the old man along with his particular characteristics make him remarkably similar to the one of bible’s tragic heroes; he is th...
?The Cask of Amontillado? raises a question pertaining to the multiple character of the self (Davidson 202); Can harmony of one's self be restored once primal impulses have been acted upon? This question proposes the fantasy of crime without consequence (Stepp 60). Edgar Allan Poe uses first person point of view, vivid symbolism and situational irony to show that because of man's inner self, revenge is ultimately not possible.
Ancient Egyptians tried to understand their place in the universe. This is why their mythology is centered on nature such as the earth, sky, moon, sun, stars, and the Nile River. There are many Egyptian myths of creation, but the Heliopolitan Tradition, Hermopolitan Ogdoad, and the Memphite Theology are the most commonly used. They all have some common elements and gods. For example, many of t...
People of the ancient world often had questions about their existence and how life and people came to be on earth. Most ancient people answered these questions through religion. The Sumerians were the first important group of people to inhabit Mesopotamia and they were known to practice a form of worship called polytheism, which is the worship of several gods. Mesopotamians associated different gods with natural events, emotions, and other occurrences. Their main deities included An (the god of the heavens), Enlil (Lord Storm), Enki (god of wisdom), and Nihursaga (the mother of all living things)(p.22). The Mesopotamians believed that the gods controlled all of the events and occurrences in life. An ancient text called “Creation of Man by the Mother Goddess” (p.34) helps us understand how the M...
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is a frightening and entertaining short story about the severe consequences that result from persistent mockery and an unforgiving heart. Poe’s excellent use of Gothicism within the story sets the perfect tone for a dark and sinister plot of murder to unfold. “The Cask of Amontillado” simply overflows with various themes and other literary elements that result from Poe’s Gothic style of writing. Of these various themes, one that tends to dominant the story as a whole is the theme of revenge, which Poe supports with his sophisticated use of direct and indirect factors, irony, and symbolism.
The subject of this report focuses on the phenomenon known as Urban Legend. Urban Legend, henceforth referred to as UL, is well known in the arena of folklore and other sorts of stories passed down through generations; however, it is relatively new to the world of literary composition as a legitimate genre to be analyzed and studied in texts by experts of literature. In fact, if it had to be labeled, UL would be considered a sub-genre of folklore by many of the experts. These stories are known as "modern oral folklore - typically a tall tale with a frisson of comeuppance of horror, related as having actually happened to a 'friend of a friend'" (Clute & Grant, 1997). UL is also considered to be very similar to myth and fantasy.
In the 1964 play Dutchman by Amiri Baraka, formally known as Le Roi Jones, an enigma of themes and racial conflicts are blatantly exemplified within the short duration of the play. Baraka attacks the issue of racial stereotype symbolically through the relationship of the play’s only subjects, Lula and Clay. Baraka uses theatricality and dynamic characters as a metaphor to portray an honest representation of racist stereotypes in America through both physical and psychological acts of discrimination. Dutchman shows Clay, an innocent African-American man enraged after he is tormented by the representation of an insane, illogical and explicit ideal of white supremacy known as Lula. Their encounter turns from sexual to lethal as the two along with others are all confined inside of one urban subway cart. Baraka uses character traits, symbolism and metaphor to exhibit the legacy of racial tension in America.