Reading Notes: Stranger Things!

Wow it is so strange to read these stories now that I am older! So many of them feature statements or actions that seemed totally normal when I was studying them in high school I now look at with a totally different perspective. In "The Divine" for example, it felt totally aggressive to me that the Japanese God of Storms would ask for the couples daughter in exchange for slaying the eight headed snake - how is he a hero if he's only helping them out so he can take the Hime for his own? Even the story of Pygmalion felt creepier on this reading - there is a sort of obvious modern day equivalent to what he's doing with his "Ivory girl" that adds a weird perspective to this story. My favorite moment of surprise, however, came from "The Three Roses" when the Prince, having been inexplicably released by the third daughter cutting off his head, says to her "There's no help for it: I must marry you". Ummm no you really mustn't!!

Pygmalion and Galatea

It was also really interesting to me that so many of the stories involved enchanted animals. In "Origins" the entire story is about the soon-to-be Buddha who is posing (or origination?) as a Hare. I enjoyed this story because it followed a more traditional moral storyline. While many of the other stories were just fun tales about heroics, the story really honored sacrifice and generosity. "Tricksters", too, is all about a Jackal and a tiger. My biggest takeaway from this story was how strange it is that so many cultures have "trickster" myths. The idea of Gods playing tricks on mortals and messing things up for them seems pretty horrible so it's a little strange that so many stories would be about that. Maybe they were used to excuse humans messing things up themselves - after all if a god is to blame for your misfortune how can you be at fault?

Overall this was an awesome introduction to the class! I was surprised by the wide variety of stories - I was expecting to have it divided into regional units like we explored earlier this week. But I actually really enjoyed getting an introduction to several different cultures stories because I never would have checked them out!