Essay: Week 13

This week I once again chose to do the untextbook reading, however, unlike last week I didn't enjoy this set of readings as much. They were very disconnected and unrelated to one another which made them a bit of a struggle to get through. However, each of the stories focused on an internal theme or message that usually came out by the end of the short tale. I read through all of the stories and then picked a few of them to write key points about for my reading diary. Since there were over 20 stories I didn't feel that it was necessary to summarize all of them. Basically the stories were very short fables that each told of a relationship and the actions between characters. Had I known that all of the stories were going to be very close to one another I probably would have chose a different reading, this one dragged on as I got about half way through. Although I didn't enjoy this set of readings as much as the first ones, I do still love this unit and the freedom that it provides us. It is great to get a new set of characters each week and have various new story lines and plots to follow. The untextbook version is definitely the way that I will continue to read because it keeps me on my toes, never growing stagnate.

My favorite story of this set was the crow and the egret. Basically a crow switches its babies with and egret's and tries to play it off like nothing happened. The crow does this because she is jealous of the white and beautiful babies that the egret has while her's are black and unattractive. The egret and crow ask a man to decide which babies belong to which mother and his greed drives him to agree with the crow. The egret is distraught over this and discusses her problem with the jackal who oversees everything. The man overhears their conversation and realizes that he has done wrong in taking the side of the crow and realizes he must right his wrong. He goes back and gets the babies switched back to their rightful mothers so he doesn't have to deal with the jackal. This tale discusses the greed that people have for one another and what it can cause people to do.

Santal Folklore

Crow and an Egret

Prashant