Mythology and Folklore

In a house on the other side of the world, there lived a very beautiful girl. She took may suitors as husbands, but one by one they perished by the tricks of her father. Her father was very cruel and possessive of her beauty, not believing any man was good enough for her. At last, only one husband remained. His features were light in comparison to her midnight black hair and dark chestnut eyes, but she was determined to help him survive the tests of her father. One evening, the father invited the husband over to his house for dinner, expecting to rid himself of his son-in-law once and for all. "You must absolutely not wear your shoes inside his house." the wife warned. "Although the ground looks calm, you will burn up if your shoes touch the carpet." When the son arrived, he followed the father inside. "There is no need for you to remove your shoes here, I will take no disrespect." the father urged. But the son, aware of his tricks, vehemently insist...

This second unit of this reading focused much more on humans and their relationships, especially those between father and son. I noticed that there is a lot of competition between males in Native American stories; many time an older male will try to banish or kill a young up-and-comer. They are often jealous of their youth and very protective of their women and resources. But the young male hero always emerges victorious in the end, much from the help of a female that also wishes the old male to fall. There are often mystical powers involved, including enchanted animals, spirits, witches, and even the earth and skies itself taking part at times. Earthquakes, thunderstorms, giant storms at sea are all fair game. I was not as engrossed with the writing style as I was with Part A. These stories focues a lot on actions only, and it seemed a bit dry at times. Without as much dialogue it was hard to get attached to a character, since you couldn't tell what his personality was like. Als...

One thing I really enjoyed so far about this reading is how long the stories are. Instead of individual stories per chapter, each of these takes up about three chapter for one story. I felt like this really helped with character and plot development. Also, unlike the Alaskan stories I read last week, these stories were a bit more realistic, in the sense that they took place (mainly) on earth with real animals and real events in nature. Everyone loves a good hero story, and all of these were untraditional in their own way which made them interesting. One that I particularly liked centered around a bluejay, whose selfish actions were the reason he got sent on a journey to begin with. But upon his return, despite overcoming many obstacles, his life is pretty much the same before. It was interesting how their definition of hero is quite different from those we typically think of. For humans, it means dominating as the top species. For animals, it usually means just surviving.  At ti...