This week I decided to read the
Un-Textbook Unit: Nigerian Folk Stories.
At first, I wanted to read one of the Japanese mythology units, but when
I saw that this section had stories with elephants in them I was sold! Below are my notes from this unit:
I
absolutely loved this story! I like how there was a definite beginning, climax,
and end of this story. I enjoyed that
the audience was given all aspects of the story, and readers weren’t left
wondering what happened to any particular character. As I’ve stated before I always enjoy when a
story explains why “so and so does such and such.” This was a great interpretation to why the
bat only comes out at night.
All
I can say is WOW! I love the theme in
this story where the daughter learns a lesson in which she must obey her
parent’s wishes. I think that the story
is crazy, in a sense, regarding the extent that Afiong had to go before she
learned that she was in trouble. I enjoyed
the end of the story where one has to be reminded that although someone can be
a beautiful human being, what he or she holds inside may be very ugly.
I
found this story very strange that a King would want to marry the daughter of
an animal. I also feel that it must have
been very difficult for the King to love and keep up with all two hundred and
fifty of his former wives. I almost
wonder if this is a story to teach children, or anyone, consequences regarding
bestiality.
This
was definitely one of my favorite stories.
I thought that the Leopard handled the situation between the fish and
his wife very well. I think that any
other animal would have killed the fish, but the Leopard decided that it was
the King’s job and asked for his help. I
think that this story had an interesting take on why fish inhabit the sea.
This
has to be my absolute favorite story, although it is very gruesome indeed. The tortoise’s actions were very graphic, in
that he decided to gouge out the eyes of the elephant. I can say, though, that I am glad that the
elephant’s eyes are not proportional to their large heads today.
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(Elephant)
This
story was very interesting on a take on why the sun and moon are in the sky. I
think that the fact the sun and the moon are married was very interesting, and
why they are in the sky together. When
the water was filling the sun’s home, I was beginning to get confused on how it
began to “level with the top of man’s head” etc. I was wondering where the men came from and
why they were either not burnt by the sun or drowned by the water. I think I am inferring to much on the facts
of this story, but nonetheless I did enjoy the tale and the Nigerian culture’s take
on why the sun and moon are in the sky.
Once
again, I love reading stories to how and why nature works the way it does. I think that it is comical that the thunder
is an old mother sheep, and the lightening is her son, a ram. This story explains the destructive nature of
lightening, and why we hear the noisiness of thunder (the old mother sheep
getting onto the ram).
I
feel bad for the dog in this story. I
don’t think that Creator should have entrusted his important message to a dog
and the sheep, or that he should have not sent the dog on his journey without
out food substances prepared to refresh his mind. I think for the sake of possible
overpopulation, the sheep getting his message to the people was essential. If we had the dead coming back to life all
the time, reproduction would become a problem fairly quickly.
The
initial reason to why the Moon waxes and wanes made sense, concerning the old
woman eating, but when she decides to stay in the sky permanently I became
confused. On a side note I felt bad for
the old woman, because if she was not left in the bush to starve she wouldn’t
have taken the Moon’s meat. Instead of
attacking, and scaring the Moon, the people could have handled the situation
differently and just helped her with food.
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