Thursday, November 6, 2014

Essay: Week 12

This week I chose to do the un-textbook readings and was quite happy with my choice. This option was great because it provided me with a much needed change and a fresh look at some Indian tales. I read all of the stories in Twenty Two Goblins which I must say, were quite enticing. I really enjoyed having a new set of characters to analyze and not as much background knowledge of the happenings. I also liked that the overall story was made up of smaller individual stories told throughout. I think this helped me to stay intrigued and continue reading each section.

I think my favorite story that was told within Twenty Two Goblins was The Girl and the Thief. Basically the daughter of a powerful merchant refuses to marry any acceptable man that her father has presented her. The town is being continually ransacked by a thief who the king manages to apprehend one night. He his sent to be executed and while he is on the stage the girl falls in love with him. She attempts to have her father convince the king to let the man go but he refuses. She stays next to the thief during the execution and for her commitment and compassion she is rewarded by the gods. They grant the thief his life and the two are married. The thief also becomes a good and honest man, he is made a general for the king. I really enjoyed this story because of the various aspects and layers that it had. Although, it does seem to be a tale of love it is also one of heartbreak and duplicity.

Overall I think this was a great unit and a nice break from the consistent readings that we have had thus far. It was a good change of pace and in the future I would suggest having this option available every month just to change things up. It definitely reignited my interest in the class and even got me to do a storytelling post which hasn't happened in a few weeks.

Twenty Two Goblins

E-Book 
Posted by at
Labels: ,

1 comment:

  1. Laura GibbsNovember 7, 2014 at 9:13 AM

    Thank you so much for your comments, Austin - and I am really glad you liked the readings! I thought they would make a really good break for the end of the semester and I also have an idea to include them earlier on in the semester too, either in the way you suggest here, as a kind of "break" or as an alternative to Buck's Ramayana. I'm still pondering how to do that. I was so surprised that very few people chose this option and instead are reading Buck's Mahabharata. On the one hand, it made me feel good that people like Buck's dense storytelling style... but I was also surprised that more people did not choose the other option just for the variety. There are so many storytelling traditions in India that exist side by side with the epics, and they are all interconnected in the world of storytelling of course! :-)

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)