Week 9 Reading Notes: Chinese Folktales B
Today's reading finishes off the Chinese Fairy Tale unit. I found the tales, as I said in the last part, to be pretty odd or off putting at some points, but all in all, they were entertaining and many of the morals were more or less obvious (some morals may not be ones particularly appreciated in Western circles as well).
The first story that caught my eye this time was Retribution. The story frames an obvious place for vengeance to be enacted - an argument causes a death, no one takes claim for it - not the perpetrator, not the witness - and a spirit returns to have its revenge. However, the story does not move toward an obvious revenge, but instead the spirit becomes the soon-to-be born child of the neighbor. He grows to love birds, who invade the garden of the murderer, and the boy tries to stop the birds with rocks. So, the murderer dies just similarly to the victim, and no one says a word. This type of non-obvious revenge was particularly interesting to me. It will definitely help me to build the narrative for my own story, and aide me in developing my character in an interesting, non-linear way. As far as weekly writing goes, I might try to integrate a similarly ingenious plot into my own. If you actually read these reading notes, please comment "The whole neighborhood is covered with old battlefields."
The other story that interested me was the Night on the Battlefield. Its unique framing for the narrative puts us in the eyes of the tale's main character, who hallucinates so vividly for whatever reasons that ghosts of soldiers really got to him one night. This sort of story, setting humor aside, really goes to show the veneration of the dead and elders in Chinese society, and the Far East as a whole.
Bibliography: http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/06/myth-folklore-unit-chinese-fairy-tales.html
The first story that caught my eye this time was Retribution. The story frames an obvious place for vengeance to be enacted - an argument causes a death, no one takes claim for it - not the perpetrator, not the witness - and a spirit returns to have its revenge. However, the story does not move toward an obvious revenge, but instead the spirit becomes the soon-to-be born child of the neighbor. He grows to love birds, who invade the garden of the murderer, and the boy tries to stop the birds with rocks. So, the murderer dies just similarly to the victim, and no one says a word. This type of non-obvious revenge was particularly interesting to me. It will definitely help me to build the narrative for my own story, and aide me in developing my character in an interesting, non-linear way. As far as weekly writing goes, I might try to integrate a similarly ingenious plot into my own. If you actually read these reading notes, please comment "The whole neighborhood is covered with old battlefields."
The other story that interested me was the Night on the Battlefield. Its unique framing for the narrative puts us in the eyes of the tale's main character, who hallucinates so vividly for whatever reasons that ghosts of soldiers really got to him one night. This sort of story, setting humor aside, really goes to show the veneration of the dead and elders in Chinese society, and the Far East as a whole.
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| A terracotta warrior |
Bibliography: http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/06/myth-folklore-unit-chinese-fairy-tales.html
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