Week 6 Essay: Motif and Reoccurring Themes

For this weeks Un-Textbook assignment, I decided to read the Unit: Filipino Popular Tales.  These stories were derived, by the author, from tales derived from many regions of the Philippines.  As I began to read the stories there were some reoccurring themes, and motifs, that I began to recognize a trend.  Many of the stories that contained animals normally had a jealous character, or a trickster among the characters. Normally, the one who is playing the tricks was either a monkey or a turtle.  Many of the stories where a trickster was involved, the poor victim were more times than not hurt very badly or killed.  One phrase that I had read many times was that the animals would ask their victim if they wanted to wear "the King's belt," which turned out to be an anaconda, and when they would accept they would either be killed or nearly strangled to death.  

(The King's belt, Wikipedia)

When the stories consisted of humans there was usually a man who was either interacting with his father, and family, or he was told by someone that he would marry a princess.  Two particular stories contained plots where two poor men were fortunate enough to marry a princess despite odds. One man was aided by a devil, which I found VERY strange that people were interacting with devils, and in the other story God helps a man who he think is a noble being. Although one story focuses on a good entity, and the other a bad one, they both show a spiritual side of Filipinos and how important this aspect was to their culture.  A last theme that I would like to mention is how many stories, towards the end of the unit, would either describe either a moral or why something in nature occurs the way it does.  My favorite of these two motifs was how animals have come to behave as we know them to.  For instance there were explanations to why chickens peck the ground, why squids carry black ink, why the Coling has a bald spot, etc.  Today, we all know that there is a scientific explanation for why all these things occur, but I enjoy hearing these "creation-like" stories and enjoy their imputes. 

(A Coling, Wikipedia)