Reading Notes: Aesop's Fables, Another Lion

Hi! For my first reading this week I read Aesop's Fables. I have always thought these were fun stories and enjoyed some of the lessons they teach. One in particular that I read was about listening to one's parents which I think is really important, because that is how we learn to be adult and keep ourselves safe. However, this story was told from the perspective of two lions, a father and son. The father tells the son when he is young not to go picking a fight with humans because he will lose. Later when the little lion is older, he disregards what his father taught him, and goes looking for a man to grapple with. When he finds the man, he is tricked into putting his paw in a trap and to get free he loses his claws. While this is a great lesson, I thought it was kind of backwards. If anything I think that humans would be wise to avoid picking a fight with lions. So if I were to rewrite it I would put the characters in the opposite position. I would have a father tell his children not to pick fights with lions, and then the children would have to learn that he was right the hard way.

I have included two photos of a lions that I might use if I write a story based on this Aesop's Fable. The drawing is of an extinct Cape Lion done by Rembrandt. I liked it for it's aged appearance because it looked to me like what an illustration in an old children's book. The other is of an adult lion and a cub which would be fitting for the original story.

Bibliography

Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists by Roger L'Estrange

Photo Credit

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Adult Lion Playing With Lion Cub via Pexels

Comments

Reading Notes: The Man in the Moon and Pygmalion

Hello! I couldn’t quite decide how to start these notes, so I decided I would stick with that theme and take style notes over how the stories in the anthology were started. Many of them started with some form of “ once upon a time,” or “one day” this included the stories in, The divine, Tricksters, and the Fairytales sections. This is a beginning I think a lot of us are familiar with from fairytales and has almost become a cliché in some ways. Unless I was going to write a fairytale, I don’t think that I would use this tool to start a story and even then, I might not. The other stories in the anthology had what I called a “ cold start ,” to distinguish them from the stories that used the “once upon a time” start. There were a few similarities that I noticed. The stories in the Origins section were a very cold start. For instance, “ The Man in the Moon ” only states that there was a blacksmith that didn’t like his job. We don’t learn anything about who he is as a p...

Reading Notes: Japanese Fairy Tales, Part B

Hi! I missed the second reading for this week, so I am making it up today with these reading notes over Japanese fairy tales. This reading included three stories, one of and Ogre, a Goblin, and a Princess not unlike the story of Cinderella. All three of these are from Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki, who is pictured above with her husband. Out of the three stories, I liked the story about the Princes Hase the best, so I took notes over that story specifically. Here are those notes. The story of Princess Hase is told from a third person perspective. In the story there is very little dialogue. In fact, the only dialogue in the pieces, is that of the step-mother right before her poisoning attempt backfires and at the end when Hase’s father finds her hiding in the mountains. I think that this sparing use of dialogue at the worst and best point in the story is an interesting style choice that creased a stronger connection to the story at those points. I think that ...

Reading Notes: Persian Tales Part A

Hello! This week I chose to read the Persian Tales unit and was not disappointed. Some of these fairy tales like “The Boy Who Became a Bulbul” and “The Wolf-Aunt” reminded me of the Brother’s Grim Fairytales in their more original forms. The others seemed a little more child friendly like we might expect of fairytales today. Thinking of my story for this week, any of them could make a fun base for writing, but I think that the ones that would be the best to work with would be “The Boy Who Became a Bulbul,” “Nim Tanak,” or “Muhammad Tirandaz, The Archer.” For “The Boy Who Became a Bulbul” I would make the circumstances of the boy’s death make more sense to a modern reader, not just based on a bet with his father that he willingly submits to. I would also want to somehow bring the boy back, maybe instead of the Bulbul growing out of the stalk, he does. Or maybe his father doesn’t kill him but hides him instead. Either way I would like for the boy to live. For “Nim T...

Mythology Blog

Search This Blog