Essay Week 4: Stories within Stories

                Last week, for our Storybook Project assignment, we explored various storytelling options that we might later use for our final Storybook. It was a great way to learn about telling stories from different perspectives using various techniques. This week, I read stories in the Arabian Nights unit. These stories used a particular form of storytelling. The stories were layered in such a way that some of the stories were stories told within a story, and others were stories told within those stories. The style was very interesting in the way that it brought all of the stories together.

                The unit begins with a story of an evil sultan who takes a bride every night, then kills them the next morning. Scheherazade, the daughter of the sultan’s vizir, then offers herself as a bride and uses the following stories to postpone her death. Each night she will end the story at an interesting point, influencing the sultan to let her live another day so that he can hear the rest of the story the following night. It is a genius plan, but we don’t get to see how it ends for Scheherazade. I suppose that the entire story was too long to fit into this whole unit.

Scheherazade. Web Source: Un-Textbook

                Something very interesting about the stories she tells each night is that they often relate to the predicament she is in. In the Merchant and the Genius, the Merchant finds himself at the hands of an angry Genie. However, the Genie does not kill the Merchant because of the stories told by three old men. We see the same thing happen to a fisherman who is threatened by a genie. In this story, the genie tells a story, then is tricked by the fisherman, who then tells a story of his own. The stories are all so complex, so this provides Scheherazade many nights to postpone her death.

Storytelling for Week 4: The Widow

There once was a man who spotted a black widow scurrying on the floor of his dining room. At once he picked up a newspaper to remove the vile creature from his dwelling, but was stopped when he heard a tiny voice say, "No! Please! I promise I will bring no harm to your home or those within it. Spare my life this day!"

The man was amazed! "How can a spider such as you be able to speak?" the man asked.

"I was not always a widow as you see me now. I was once a woman with a husband, but no offspring. Let me tell you my tale. If you find it entertaining, you must promise not to kill me."

"Agreed," said the man.

The black widow went on to tell her story:

There once was a wealthy tailor who lived with his wife. Their business was very successful. She would weave fantastic fabrics and he would form them into wonderful garments that were coveted throughout the town. Despite all of their financial success, however, they still had a hole in their heart, for they were unable to bear children. This made the tailor sad, for he would have no child to inherit all that he had acquired when he died.

      News spread by whispers of the couple’s misfortunes, and found itself in the ears of the town’s harlot and her bastard child. The harlot went to the tailor and offered to let her son fill the void in the tailor’s heart, if he would only let her live with them in his home. The tailor joyfully agreed, despite the warnings from his wife. The wife was most distrustful of the harlot and her son.

      The tailor raised the boy as his own son, and loved him very much. Then a day came when he had to travel for a month or two to sell his clothing. He asked his wife to take good care of the boy and his harlot mother while he was away. The wife reluctantly agreed.

      While the tailor was away, the wife happened to overhear a conversation the harlot had with her boy. The harlot described an elaborate plan to the boy. Upon the tailor’s arrival, the harlot would fake a terrible sickness. The boy was to plead for his inheritance from his adoptive father, so that he could travel with his mother to a doctor many towns away. However, the boy and his harlot mother would flee with the money and never return. The wife of the tailor knew that her husband would never believe such a tall tale if she told him, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

      One night, while the tailor was still away, the wife journeyed to the woods just outside of the town. There, she spoke with a witch who lived in the woods. She told the witch of her predicament, and asked what could be done. The witch told the wife what should be done. The wife should use a magical silk made from a spider that lives deep inside the woods. This silk should then be spun into a blanket. When the harlot mother and her son go to sleep with this blanket, they will wake up to find themselves transformed into spiders.

      The wife did as the witch said, and wove a beautiful blanket that she then offered to the boy and his harlot mother. The two slept beneath that blanket the night before the tailor was to return. When the tailor returned the next morning, he entered his boy’s room. Instead of the boy and his harlot mother, he found only a pair of spiders in the boy’s bed. The tailor grabbed a newspaper to destroy them, for he hated spiders, but his wife stopped him. She told him what she had overheard and what she had done.

The man left the room, stricken with grief. The wife became overcome with sorrow for the damage she had caused her husband’s heart. She sat on the bed and began to weep uncontrollably. She finally forced her eyes closed and fell asleep. When she awoke, she found herself beneath the blanket she made for the boy and his harlot mother. She had been transformed into a spider by the same magic she created for her enemies.

"I then left the only home I knew, and have travelled about as a spider ever since," explained the black widow.

"Truly, I have been entertained," said the man. "I will grant you welcome in my home this day. Each day hereafter, though, the price for staying within my home will be an entertaining story such as this."

Author's Note: This story is based on The Hind, which can be found in the Arabian Nights unit. The story is about a man who adopts one of his slaves sons. The wife doesn't like it, so she turns the son and his mother into a cow and a calf. The wife said that the slave had died and the son disappeared. Later, during a celebration, the man tried to kill the cow and the calf, but was stopped both times and was told that they were really the slave and her son. The man then has someone turn the slave and the son back and turn the wife into a deer. In the original story, the wife was kind of whacked out and crazy. I wanted to tell a story that was from her perspective. It gave the reader a reason for the wife's hatred of the other woman and her son.

The Story of the First Old Man and the Hind. Web Source: Un-textbook

Bibliography

"The Hind", from The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

Week 4: Arabian Nights

Scheherazade: the sultan was off-his-rocker with bitterness over his ex-wife. the grand-vizir being asked to offer his daughter reminds me of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. I liked how this story was a set-up for the following story
The Merchant and the Genius: I see where this is going. A bunch of stories within stories to stall the death of the grand-vizir's daughter
The Two Black Dogs: So far I can see a general theme of people being spared their death in these stories. I would venture to guess that the daughter of the grand-vizir will be spared in the end.
The Parrot and the Ogress: We are getting into Inception-style story now. We have the grand-vizir's daughter telling a story about a fishman who is teaching a lesson to a genie with a story about a king, whose vizir is jealous of the king's relationship with a physician, telling a story to his vizir about another king and his vizir. Wow.