Reading Diary for Week 11: King Arthur

King Arthur Unit

The Sword Excalibur: It's never safe in a story to exchange an open ended promise for a gift. When the other party decides to redeem that promise, it is always more than the fool bargained for. It reminds me of Wimpy how would offer to pay Tuesday for a hamburger today.
The Passing of Merlin: I like it when things can't be changed. Whenever time traveling or fortune-telling is involved in a story, it always gets mess with how it can work out and still make sense. I like all the mess is cut out and it is simply stated that what happened happened and whatever will happen will happen.
King Arthur and Morgan le Fay: It is great that King Arthur has so many wise people surrounding him. I feel like he is not very wise and is prone to making foolish mistakes.

Storytelling Week 10: The Jealous Son and the Unlucky Mother

                There once was a king of a great kingdom. The king had two children, one a boy and the other a daughter. The king loved both children very much, but he showed more love to the daughter than to the son. This made the son angry and he was always envious of his sister, so he was known as Jealous Son.

                Years past and the children grew up, became married, and had children of their own. The Jealous Son’s wife had many girls, but never a son. This made the Jealous Son nervous, for his sister had already had a son. He did not want her son to inherit the kingdom, so he killed him and made it look like an accident. His sister had several more sons, but each one was killed by the Jealous Son and their death was made to look like an accident. The Jealous Son’s sister accused her brother to the king, but the king said that each death was an accident and she was just unlucky. She was then known as Unlucky Mother.

                The Unlucky Mother had yet another son. She and her husband feared the Jealous Son’s wrath, and thus decided to dress the child as a girl in hopes of fooling the uncle. This was not successful after a few years. The Jealous Son could tell that the child was a boy and decided to kill him. He told his sister that he would take his nephew hunting at the end of the next week.

                When the parents found out that their plan had failed, they cried for days. When the boy asked why they were so sad, they explained what had happened to his brothers and what would likely happen to him. The boy reassured them, however, and told them that his uncle would not be able to kill him during their hunting trip. Any trap the Jealous Son would set for him, he would surely be able to get out of. He only asked if his brothers had any possessions that he would have. The parents told their boy that they only had a sour cranberry, and they gave that to their son.

                The day came for the hunting trip and the Jealous Son took his nephew with him. They were going to hunt rabbits to bring home for a feast. The boy saw many rabbits on their way, but the Jealous Son said that there were fatter rabbits further on. The boy saw even fatter rabbits as they continued, but the Jealous Son again said that there were fatter rabbits further on. Finally, the two spotted a very fat rabbit, just barely smaller than the boy, hidden inside of a hollow log. The Jealous Son instructed the boy to go into the log and retrieve the rabbit. However, when the boy entered the log he got stuck, for he was too big. The rabbit left the log and the Jealous Son returned home, leaving the boy behind.

                The boy wiggled and wiggled, trying to force himself out of the log, but he was truly stuck. Then he remembered the sour cranberry that his parents had given him. He took it out of his pocket, and rubbed it all over the inside of the log. The log detested the sour taste of the cranberry, and opened its mouth wide enough to release the boy. The boy then returned home to reassure his parents.

                The boy’s mother then took her son to the king to share what happened on the hunting trip. She pleaded with the king and begged him to see that this is what happened to her other sons. The king agreed and ordered that the Jealous Son be put in the deepest dungeon. The boy and his mother never saw the Jealous Son again.

Yupik Mother and Child. Web Source: Wikipedia

 

 

Author’s Note:

This story is based on The Jealous Uncle, which can be found in the Native American Heroes unit. I changed the name of the uncle to The Jealous Son in order to emphasize his boyish desire to be king. This was a motive that I added to the story to explain the uncle’s desire to kill his nephews. The original story continues and the uncle tries to kill the boy several times. For time sake, I simply ended the story after the first attempt.

 

Bibliography:

“The Jealous Uncle” from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929). Web Source: Un-Textbook

Reading Diary Week 10: Native American Hero Tales

Native American Hero Tales

The Jealous Uncle:
This story reminded me of the adventures of Sindbad in the way that the boy is repeatedly thrown into peril. I'm glad that the Uncle met justice in the end.

Bluejay and his Companions:
Talk about a prank going wrong! It was awesome that the Grouse got back at the other guys for the way they treated him, but I doubt that he meant for it to go that far.

Essay for Week 9: Sioux Legends Review

                This week I read the Sioux Legends unit. I went into it expecting to read some stories involving animals, maybe some humans, and a lot of tricksters based on the description in the UN-Textbook table of contents. This much was true. However, I went into the unit with a pre-existing assumption that legends and fables usually are strongly centered on some moral. This much was not true for this particular reading unit. The stories did not seem to make much sense and contained a lot of randomness. I did not see a point to many of the stories that I read.

                I rewrote the story of The Rabbit and the Bear in my storytelling assignment. I did this because of my lack of satisfaction with the ending. The rabbit finds himself ill prepared for the hunt. He then travels to visit the bear chief to acquire flint for his arrowheads. He takes too much and kills the chief. My expectation for a story like this would be for the rabbit to learn a lesson at the end. He was an irresponsible and selfish creature and he should be punished. Instead, he gets away with the flint and kills all of the other bears. The story takes the alternate path that is very unsatisfying and ultimately boils down to an explanation for why there aren’t as many bears anymore. It just made me feel like I wasted my time by reading this story.

                Even worse was the story of The Boy and the Turtles. What the heck happened in that story? Why did the boy not hunt for turtles in the usual place? Why did the men appear in the lake? Why was the boy honored when they confirmed his story? What does it all mean? The story just seems so nonsensical and ridiculous.

Turtles. Web Source: Flickr

Storytelling for Week 9: The Rabbit and the Bear

Hard times had fallen on the rabbit and his grandmother. The season for hunting was approaching fast, yet the rabbit found himself ill-prepared. He had used the last of his arrowheads the previous season and had failed to prepare more. It would be worthless to fire off any of the plethora of arrow sticks he had without a sharp head.

            His grandmother instructed him that he must go and make new arrow heads with flint, but the rabbit did not know where to find the flint. His grandmother then told him that he would only find flint in the body of the old bear chiefs.

            The rabbit then began his journey to the village of the Bears where he would find the old bear chief. The rabbit used his great speed to travel to the far away village. He wanted to make great haste, so he did not make a single stop and even traveled through the night, despite the danger he risked running into. However, the rabbit made it safely to the village of the Bears by the next morning.

            The rabbit was welcomed into the chief’s home, and was even offered a pipe to smoke while he and the chief spoke. When the small talk had run its course, the chief asked the rabbit what he wanted. The rabbit then told the chief of his predicament, and made the request to take some flint so that he could make new arrow heads. The chief then pulled off his robe and, to the rabbit’s great surprise, revealed that his body was composed half of flesh and half of solid flint.

            The chief then instructed his subjects to bring a hammer and a chisel to the rabbit. He told the rabbit that he was allowed to take his fair share of the flint. He also warned him that if the rabbit took too big of a piece, his guards would surely chase him down and eat him. The rabbit ignored the warning, however, thinking that he was fast enough to outrun any bear in the village. Thus, he struck off a piece much larger than what he needed.

            The chief then cried out in agony, for no creature had ever stuck off a piece as large as the rabbit’s. The chief’s guards responded immediately and took chase after the rabbit. The rabbit began to take flight; however, he found himself weary from the previous night’s travel and weighed down by the mass of the flint he carried. The guards were able to catch him easily. Two of them took the flint back to the chief in hopes to mend him, and the other two killed the rabbit and began to prepare him for a stew that they would offer to the chief.

(original drawing in book)

Author's Note: The original story, The Rabbit and the Bear with the Flint Body, was much like the story that I told. Only, when the rabbit runs away, the bears get stuck in a snow storm and the rabbit kills them one by one. This is then given as an explanation for why there are now so few bears. I didn't like the ending of the original or the theme behind it, so I decided to rewrite it. I wrote it with the proverb "Pride cometh before destruction" in mind, just incase I would like to add this to my storybook.

Bibliography:

"The Rabbit and the Bear with the Flint Body" by Marie McLaughlin from Myths and Legends of the Sioux (1916). Websource: Un-Textbook

Reading Diary Week 9: Myths an Legends of the Sioux

The Rabbit and the Bear: This story was really odd. The plot went all over the place and the ending was unsatisfying. I think I will rewrite this story for my storytelling assignment, but change the ending. I'll have the rabbit bite off more than he can chew.

The Simpleton's Wisdom: These stories are pretty weird. I'm not understanding the point to many of them.

The Boy and the Turtles: Why did the boy not begin with the lake where the tribe normally hunted turtles? Why did the men appear in the lake? Why was the boy honored when they confirmed his story? What does it all mean?!

Reading Diary Self-Assessment

                As the semester has gone on, I was starting to think I was doing the Reading Diary posts wrong. I had kept the posts on the stories rather short, so the entire post was not very substantial. I was just writing bits and pieces of things I thought while reading the stories and how I might use the story in the future. Upon reading the Guidelines for the Reading Diary, I was reassured that this was exactly what I should be doing.

It’s super helpful this way, too. While reading through my Reading Diary, I found a couple of stories that I had read that I would like to include in my Storybook. I had just written a couple of notes on these stories, but these notes triggered the part of my brain where the story was stored, and I was able to remember the plot I had read weeks ago. The summary of the story wouldn’t have been beneficial since the short notes reminded me what happened in the story. It was these notes, though, that made me see an association with the story and the theme of my Storybook.

I do notice, however, that I comment on almost every story I read in a given unit. This isn’t bad, but it does make the post a little cluttered with useless information. I will probably focus on the stories that I consider to be my favorites and write about them. This is hard to do, though, since I comment on a story I like right after I read it. When I like most of the stories in a unit or find most of them interesting, I end up writing about almost all of them. Perhaps I will raise the bar to REALLY liking them before commenting on them.

Overall, I think that the Reading Diary is a great assignment that is easy to complete and proves to be very helpful to other assignments. I refer to my Reading Diary often for my Storytelling assignments, and I have found inspiration for my Storybook within the comments in my Reading Diary.

Essay Week 7: I Before E Except After...What?



Cartoon By Dan Piraro

There are several humorous elements in this cartoon.. First, it pokes fun at the many rules of the English language that we learned when studying spelling in elementary school, the most famous being "'i' before 'e' except after 'c'". Then it puts this rule we learned in English and puts it in the perspective of ancient Egyptians, who wrote in hieroglyphics. Its also funny, because the writer is writing with a chisel, so his mistake is much more permanent than if a student made the mistake on pencil and paper.


Thus, the cartoon had enough humor to cause me to chuckle a bit. Soon after I remembered actually learning the "'i' before 'e' except after 'c'" rule in elementary. As with most rules in English spelling and grammar, it was followed by a long list of exceptions. Here are a few of the exceptions to the rule: science, society, fancied, financier, efficient, glacier, either, neither, heinous, seize, leisure. One quickly learns that the English language isn't very strict when implementing its rules.


That is one reason why I liked studying the German language. It was pretty cut and dry. When you heard the “i” sound, you knew that the “i” came after “e”. When it made the “e” sound, you knew that the “e” came after the “i”. That was it. The only exceptions came from foreign languages, like English. Consistency in spelling was one reason why learning the German language would be easier than learning English.


Another fun fact about German, is they didn’t like making up new words. If they found something new and they needed a new word for it, they often just took two existing words and put them together. For example, the German word for “pork” is “Schweinefleisch”, which literally translates to “pig flesh.” The only downside is that some of these compound nouns can become ridiculously long, like “Gesundheitswiederherstellungszusammenmischungsverhaeltniskundiger” which means “one who knows the mixture ratio of a concoction that is sure to restore health.”