Essay for Week 11: Beowulf

This week I read the epic Beowulf in in the British Isle section of the un-textbook. The reason I chose this story was because I remember having to read the whole poem in high school.  I am most familiar with this story, and reading it again was great. Beowulf is one of the better epics that exist today. What makes the story so good is that you get a powerful story in only about 15,000 words or so.

Beowulf reminds me of Odysseus in some ways. Both of them are heroes and kings of their land. People depended on them to lead, and overcome the obstacles in the say. There are some key differences in the two that I believe. Odysseus is more of a genuine leader, I believe, and Beowulf was appointed leader because of his natural skills. Beowulf was more known for his brute strength and ability to fight, and Odysseus mostly used his wit to defeat monsters. One could argue that Odysseus was better of the two because he didn’t die, but I don’t even want to go there. I think both heroes at O are great.

In Beowulf, I was excited to see him defeat Grendel and his mother. He literally saved a lot of people from the horrible monster. It was an extreme disappointment when he died by the dragon. I was not even expecting it, and it was a very tragic death. I think that Beowulf should have not went to slay the dragon. He already proved himself enough and killing the dragon was overkill in my opinion.  Overall I really enjoyed the story of Beowulf, and I can add it in my collection of hero stories, I wonder if there are any other stories that feature Beowulf on some other adventures I would love to read them if they did.

 



Grendel by J. R. Skelton

More info: Wikipedia

 

Essay for Week 10: Native America Review

Native America Review

For the last couple of week’s I read the stories in the Native America section. I thought that the section was satisfactory. Overall I would give it a 7/10. I enjoyed the readings, and they were all very creative. The first story I read was called “Hero Tales (Thompson). This was my favorite story! Since I am already in love with Hero’s and epic adventures, it was only natural for me to choose this one, and I really enjoyed it. I like how most of the stories had a moral point. Besides the main plot, there was also an overall meaning of the stories.  In the Jealous Uncle story, the little boy had to look past his uncle’s wrong doing. Toward the end of the story however, the uncle crossed the line and the boy killed him. The story about the Bluejay was also great. The adventures were so random that it made the story fun.

My least favorite story was the one I read this week called “Indian Fairy Tales” These Stories just didn’t really stand out to me that much. Most of them were hard for me to follow. There was one story that I really enjoyed and that was the one with the North Wind. Other than that story, the most interesting think within this section was Iagoo. I chose to write my storytelling post over Iagoo because I feel like he is the most important part within the fairy tales. He makes it all happen, and without his stories, none of this would be possible.

I learned from this reading section that most of the Indian stories have deep meanings within the story. Basically the story is never just told for “fun.” Most of the stories were also pretty graphic and ruthless with the deaths of major or minor characters, but it wasn’t distracting or anything. It was just something I noticed. Overall, I was a little surprised about how well the section turned out. It was definitely enjoyable.

Tipi by: John C. Grabill

More info on Tipi's: Wikipedia

Essay for Week 9: The Uncle

This week I read the Native American Hero Tales in the un-textbook. This unit was a very interesting unit, and different so far compared to some of the other units. I have only read one Native American story unit and I can already see how creative they are with storytelling. The Natives are one with nature. I can tell that they are in sync with the animals and the spirits. In fact, some of their gods are animals, such as an eagle.

           

The first mini story I read was called the jealous uncle and found this story to be my favorite one within the section. It had a familiar plot that I recognized but a completely different story. The story was about an Uncle who would become jealous of any Nephews that were born, so we would have then killed. Once day the mother tricked the uncle into believing that the next child she had was a girl meaning that the uncle wouldn’t kill her. The uncle eventually found out that the kid was a boy and he tried to kill him. Throughout the story the nephew out-smarted the uncle with his attempts to kill him. In the end the boy killed the uncle because of the way he treated his parents.

This stories main theme in my opinion is “loyalty” and Jealousy”.  The boy was loyal to his uncle even though he was trying to kill him over and over. He knew this and still obeyed what his uncle told him to do.  The other theme is jealousy. The uncle was fueled by jealously basically the entire story. If he had been then he would not try to kill his nephew.  I really enjoyed this story because I liked reading about how the boy handled his uncle. He stayed positive and confident in the whole story. Not once did he ever doubt and think that he would die. It was nice seeing the boy overcome the obstacles and then eventually put a stop altogether to his uncle.

Finally, the only thing that confused me was the conclusion of the story. When the boy went to the other island, did he receive “powers” that turned him into an eagle? I wasn’t exactly sure how he killed the uncle. I know he dropped him somehow, but I didn’t know it he had an eagle kill him or if the boy turned into an eagle.

Bald Eagle by: Ryan McFarland

More information of Bald Eagles: Wikipedia

Week 7 Essay: New Favorite

Week 7 Essay: New Favorite

Week 6 and 7 stories were in the Asia and African section. I really enjoyed these two weeks and it might be my new favorite unit opposed to week 1 and 2. For week 6, I read The Monkey King and for week 7 I read West African Folktales. The Monkey King was my favorite between the two. There is just something about that story that I thought made it an excellent read. Week 7 I read West African Folktales. This section included many stories about Anansi, the trickster spider. I loved most of the stories in the section. They were short and sweet, and also easy to understand. I thought it was neat how some of the stories told were about how the origin of something else came to be, for example, the crying kids, and how the tortoise got its shell. Anansi himself is a pretty interesting character. Throughout the stories he is a clever person and tends to trick most people, but he is also greedy and selfish. Most of the time his selfishness leads to him not getting what he wants in the end.

My favorite story was “Anansi and Nothing”. The word play with the “nothing” and the character named Nothing was clever. It reminded me of when Odysseus tricked the Cyclops into thinking his name was Nothing. The story is one of the best that displays Anansi’s jealously and selfishness. First he tricks his rich friend into changing cloths with him when they were searching for wives in a neighboring city. This led to Anansi getting the most beautiful wives even though he was really poor, and Nothing getting no one except a woman who felt bad for him. When they went back home it was Nothing who had all the riches and Anansi with nothing. All of Anansi’s wives went over to Nothings house and Anansi grew very jealous and killed his friend to have everything to himself.

I wouldn’t say that I have a “least” favorite story out of them all, but there were some that just were not as entertaining for me to read. They were still fine stories however. I am glad that I read the 2 stories that I chose for these 2 weeks. They are both among one of the best so far. I think that the notes provided alongside some of the stories are great. They help give me some insight on what I will be reading next about. This unit I feel that I acquired some new storytelling techniques. From both weeks there were a vast amount of stories to read which, I think, indirectly helped my creativeness. I learned a lot about Anansi and some other African tales. My expectations were met and I want to thank Mrs. Gibbs for her recommendations on the stories this week. 

A bronze Maman outside of Ottawa, Canada by: John Talbot

(could represent Anansi)

More info on Anansi: Wikipedia

Essay for Week 6: Monkeys!

Essay for Week 6: Monkeys!

This week in the Un-textbook I read The Monkey King. I decided to read this story because our teacher Mrs. Gibbs recommended it, and was it a great story! I really enjoyed the whole story of Sun Wu Kung. What I liked most about this story is reading about how Sun Wu got his power and reacted to others. At first he was just a monkey that was made from stone. He then became the king of his island, but what made him different was his obsession for everlasting life and power. He wanted to live forever so bad that he traveled around the world for years in search for it. When he finally got it he just did whatever he wanted. I wouldn’t say that Sun Wu was a bad person, but he was very rude and beast like. This made many of the people and gods angry with him.  This theme recurred throughout the story where Sun Wu gets angry that he is not of he highest rank or power, then he fights with anyone who is thrown at him. What really surprised me was the very end of the story when Sun Wu met Buddha. Buddha made a bet with him and said if Sun beat him then he would become the new Lord of the Heavens. Of course he accepted, but Sun lost to Buddha. Buddha then trapped him in isolation for over 300 years! His reasoning was that Sun was too out of control. He needed to tame him and basically chill out. 300 years is a very long time to be held in one spot! When Sun came out he was calm and polite.

I really enjoyed this story this week and I would read more about Sun Wu’s travels. I wrote my storytelling post about the Monkey King. In my story I just told the beginning part of the story where Sun (Moon in my story) had to overcome the trail to become the King of the monkeys. Overall I give this Unit an A+ so far. I really enjoyed the story and hope to read another good one next week.

Jet Li as The Monkey King

By daffy duck. 

Week 5 Essay: Mixed Feelings

Week 5 Essay: Mixed Feelings

I have mixed feeling about the Middle East and India unit.  Some of the stories were really good and others not so much. My favorite story for these weeks was Arabian Nights. The collection of stories was an easy read and had great storytelling elements in it. The way one story would lead another, and into another again was intriguing and made we just want to keep reading it forever. Also, the famous Aladdin was featured in the last 6 pages of the story, so that was cool to get a change to read his full story.

            I think that the Arabian Nights story helped me write my best story in this class! It wasn’t my favorite story ever, but the plot and storytelling was so great that it made it easy for me to write my own storytelling post. I’m surprised that this story turned out to be way better than expected. I would go back and read it any time.

            My reading for week 5 was Ancient Egypt . I want to be honest and I really didn’t like this story at all. I actually hated it, but I guess you can’t like every story you read. First of all, I thought that this story was going be about one God/Goddess, or like an epic. As it turned out instead it was about many different goods that I didn’t recognize or get to fully envision. This leads my to my second frustration. The way the stories were written in Ancient Egyptian, It was extremely hard to comprehend. The language structure was ancient and some words I could not even recognize. Next, I thought that there were too many different stories in this unit. I was hard for me to jump from one god’s story to the next. On the Brightside however, I did enjoy the story called The Two Brothers. The story was well writing with a clear plot and motif. There was also not too much interaction with all of the different Egyptian gods besides Ra who had a small but important role in the story.

            Overall I did enjoy this unit somewhat. I really liked my week 4 stories, but not so much for week 5. I can’t complain though. Every week I am grateful to even get a chance to read all of these stories. They each help me expand my creativity, imagination, and also help progress my writing skills. I learned a lot from this unit. I learned about a lot of the different Egyptian gods and goddesses. I learned about genies, and also I learned about the true take of Aladdin and the magic lamp. I didn’t expect too much from this unit but it did reach my expectations and more. There were some great stories in it.  

The Egyptian Pyramids by PixelAnarchy

More info on Egyptain Pyramids can be found at Wikipedia

Essay for week 4: Arabian Nights

Week 4 Essay

This week for class I read Arabian Nights from the UN-Textbook. It was a rather interesting read. I had some other choices in mind to read, but I didn’t because I was too unfamiliar with the topics. I chose to read Arabian Nights because in the disruption it mentions Aladdin.  Everyone has seen the Disney movie and I thought that it would be interesting to read the real story about him.

            I found of that the story was about a girl named Scheherazade who had to tell a story to save her life. Schahriar was the sultan and one day his wife betrayed him. He then killed his wife and mistrusted all women. Schahriar started to marry random women, and on the next morning he would have them killed. One day, Scheherazade volunteered herself to the sultan despite knowing what would become of her fate. She came up with clever plan to save her life. At night whenever she was sleeping with the sultan she asked if she could tell him the best story ever told. He was intrigued by this and decided to listen. Scheherazade did not finish the story before night so she asked the sultan if she could live another night to finish the story and he agreed. This occurred for many nights and the townspeople were surprised that she was not dead yet.

            The reason for her story to take up so much time was that she had a recurring motif in her story. The motif was telling a story within a story. It didn’t matter what kind of story she was telling, good or bad. Scheherazade somehow found a way to tie one story into another and another again. Her stories would reach 3 or 4 levels deep. Her strategy to stay alive by telling stories was clever and scary at the same time. Everyday she was scared that the sultan wouldn’t want to hear another story and have her killed. Besides the actually man story the other stories are pretty entertaining themselves. They are short and sweet. The last one was the longest one and it was about Aladdin and the Genie. The story was completely different from the movie and longer too so I decided to write about that for my Storytelling post. In my story my recurring motif was the dreams that Bri was having.

Sketch of Aladdin

Draw by shelziru. More drawing can he found here:

Shelziru