The Thousand And One Nights: An Analysis

When an author begins to write a story, he/she does not simply write to write, every author has one major purpose in their writings, and that purpose is to have a moral. A lesson learned, so the world as the characters know it will be a better place; but how does an author express that moral? The answer is through literary devices. There is no such thing that one author moral in their writing is better than the other authors writing and vice versa when it comes to how they explain it. Everyone writing is unique, but in my opinion, there is only one piece of writing that had a great moral and used amazing literary devices to express it and that piece is The Thousands and One Nights.
The Thousand and One Nights is a combination of stories that were put together over hundreds of years ago. As time evolved it has maintained its original moral that used many literary devices to explain it. The frame tail or overall story in The Thousands and One Nights is the story of King Shahrayar. King Shahrayar brother Shahzaman found his wife in the arms of one of their kitchen boys. Hurt and with rage he killed his wife and the kitchen boy, and fled went to his brother's kingdom. While at his brother's kingdom, he was very depressed until one night he saw his brother wife sleep with a slave. Of course King Shahrayar was

appalled until he saw it with his own eyes. Just like his brother, he has been hurt and angry and because of that he decides that all women are the same. To mend his broken heart and to never get hurt again, King Shahryar begins to marry a succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning.
Of course that is not right. Just because a woman hurt you that does not mean every woman will hurt you, so you cannot just kill women because you think they are all the same. A woman thought the same way I did and that woman was the character Shahrazad. Shahrazad had a plan, which she felt will work. Her first night with the King she begins to tell him the story of the Merchant and the Demon.
One day a merchant rode and walked for certain counties to which he called his business. As the heat was stifling, sat under a tree, and laying hold the sack of provisions, took some dates, and when he had eaten pulled far bones, but suddenly there appeared an old demon, brandishing a sword, came to the merchant and said, “Get up, that I kill you as you killed my son. After much weeping and pleading the demon let the merchant go, but only to tell his wife and children goodbye. When he saw his family “he wept bitterly, and when his family saw his sorrow and grief, they began to reproach him for his behavior, and the wife said “Husband, what is the matter with you? Why do you mourn, when we are happy, celebrating your return? He replied why “not mourn when I only have one year to live” (1189). Having his wife still very confused, he explained to her the encounter with the demon. Hearing what the merchant has just said “his wife struck her face in lamentation and cut her hair, his daughters wailed, and his little children cried”(1189).
While the merchant waited for the demon an old man appeared asking the merchant why is he an in area full of demons? The merchant told the old man why he was there. Shocked the old man said “I shall not leave until I see what will happen to you with the demon” (1189), so he sat down and the two men begin to talk. At this point what happened while they talk is a mystery because morning overtook Shahrazad and she fell asleep, leaving the King very curious to know what happened next.
For one thousand and one nights Shahrazad kept telling stories to the king that she would leave off on cliff hangers on purpose just so he would spare her life and let her finish the stories.

Her point in doing this lays out the main format of One Thousands and One Nights. You have her and King Shahrayar story as the reason while she is telling stories like The Merchant and the Demon within her story and uses cliff hangers and dramatic realization and other embedded narratives to emphasize, her distracting Shahrayar from killing women and making him realize the moral of the story. That women are powerful creatures, and though some are deceitful not all

are.