Reading Notes Part A "Arabian Nights"

The story of Scheherazade begins with the classic and well known tale of the sultan who, each night, married a girl and then had her killed in the morning. He had done this for many years and Scheherazade was determined to put a stop to it.

Scheherazade then begins to layer her stories, one after another, in a kind of "story-ception" in order to maintain the Sultan's interest and prevent her from being killed. The first story is that of a genius (or genie) who is going to kill a man for killing his son, however unwittingly. I did not quite understand how that happened, but that is ok.

In the story of the genius, there are three old men who also begin to tell stories. The first is a strangely familiar one of a vengeful and bitter wife who is turned into a deer for her black magic and murder. The other is another similar story about shapeshifting humans, where two vengeful brothers are meted out the punishment for having attempted to kill their older and most successful brother. The stories are enough to appease the genie, who spares the merchant's life.

It is interesting that so many of these kinds of fables seem to focus on the shapeshifting of humans into animals in order to teach them some kind of lesson.

The third old man shares his story, but Scheherazade does not know it. I think I will write my own for the storytelling portion of this week's assignment.

Scheherazade then moves on to the next set of stories, this time focused on the interaction between a clever fisherman and a stubborn genius. The genius is trapped by his own hubris, a very important lesson for all of us.

Story source: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

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