Sunday, November 8, 2015

Reading Diary A: Alice in Wonderland


READING A:

Down the Rabbit-Hole
Down the Rabbit-Hole (cont.)
Down the Rabbit-Hole (end)
  • Dear Alice, the purpose of a book is so that you can paint your own pictures and conversations within your own mind. Much like what you did for this story!
  • I like how this story uses caps to emphasize things. 
  • She's very much like a kid in the way she thinks and speaks... although she is one. 
  • the image of shutting up like a telescope is quite... quirky. 
Illustration by John Tenniel. 


Advice from a Caterpillar
Advice from a Caterpillar (cont.)
Advice from a Caterpillar (end)
It's so crazy, the image of a caterpillar smoking hookah and asking who you are. The little story within a story part with father william was interesting since it rhymed. I always imagined the caterpillar to be bigger than it was but.. it's actually only 3 inches tall.
For this story, I could never tell if it was her imagination or for real even though it's quite famous. 

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Extra Reading Diary: English Fairy Tales




READING A:

Tom Tit Tot
This story certainly did remind me of Rumpelstiltskin. The differences were that instead of spinning gold, the girl had to spin skein (which I originally thought was skin, which creeped me out a bit, but it was actually just a ball of yarn. That should not have been too hard.) and the little creature wanted to own her instead of her firstborn child. Also, she was already married to the king. The little rhyme that went with the name was cute as well.

This story felt like a Cinderella story gone wrong. The stepmother manages to kill the daughter of the family, and yet, the husband doesn't even bother asking what happened. The younger stepbrother didn't bother telling his father his sister was murdered either. 
That story was quite repetitive, yet, I liked it. The old woman went through so many troubles just to get her pig to move when she could have done it herself instead of asking both animate and inanimate objects to do one thing or another. 

The younger sister came back as a spirit it seems since the harper used her hair and breast bone to make an instrument. That also sounds weird since why would you use human parts to make an instrument? 
I wonder why the cat is referred to as the Mouser in this story. The story itself eventually led to the mouse being eaten, unfortunately.
That was a really cute story. One thing I didn't like was that the dance dragged on for three days until we got anywhere. "Rarely liked" sounds like "really liked." Is that the word before it became modernized?

The Story of the Three Little Pigs
I couldn't tell if that was a happy story or a savage one because the pig ended up eating the wolf in the end. I guess it just sounds weird because we eat pigs and if they're eating other things... then that would be kind of gross.

The Master and His Pupil
I want to know the words that cast away Beelzebub.
The pupil and Beelzebub. 
Source: UN-Textbook

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Reading Diary B: Canterbury Tales Unit

The Chaucer Storybook Book Cover. Source: UN-Textbook

READING B:
The Prioress's Tale: Little Hugh
  • this was a sweet tale of a little boy who sang O Alma Redemptoris
  • He was killed by Jews but managed to sing even after death
  • I found that it was weird that in this story, Jews were affiliated with Satan
  • I couldn't tell if the hen was encouraging the cock or just belittling him for telling her about his bad dream
  • It looks like the cock is quite superstitious
  • he sang so loud that he didn't hear the fox coming closer
  • Does pride make us less self-aware?
  • No one died in this story so i'm quite pleased.
The Canon's Yeoman's Tale: The Priest as Philosopher
The Priest who Learned to be a Philosopher (cont.)
The Priest who Learned to be a Philosopher (end)
  • The priest seems quite gullible. I expected the philosopher to run away with his money at first.
  • the language for this particular story is hard to follow
  • what is a "canon" or "beechen"?
  • So the "philosopher" did trick the priest after all!

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Reading Diary A: Canterbury Tales Unit



"The Canterbury Tales" by Eljiasan. Source: DeviantArt.
READING A:

The Wife of Bath's Tale: The Unknown Bride
The Unknown Bride (cont.)
  • I had a feeling that this story would end up as a "happily ever after" with the old woman actually being a beautiful young maiden
  • It kind of reminds me of the beginning of Beauty and the Beast where the witch disguised herself as an old hag
  • I really liked this story
  • Possible storytelling post
The Friar's Tale: The Story of the Summoner
The Story of the Summoner (cont.)
  • I didn't really understand what was happening until the end of the story for this one
  • So the fiend was actually a devil from hell. I thought he was just joking.
The Franklin's Tale: The Promise of Dorigen
The Promise of Dorigen (cont.)
The Promise of Dorigen (cont. again)
The Promise of Dorigen (end)
  • It's sweet to see how much Dorigen loved her husband.
  • The squire had a kind of "love at first sight" moment
  • Arviragus was actually really nice to let his wife go... I would have thought he would fight for her.
  • I felt like Arviragus was the most generous, but all three were very generous
  • that was a great story too
  • The ending was very clever in that they were trying to find Death and eventually did find him
  • The 3 men were equally wretched in this story
  • I wonder who the old man really was; was he Death?

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Week 10 Storytelling: Coming Home

Don came home from work after a long day sorting and selling prescriptions. The patients that morning were more irritable than normal, especially since it was flu season. He went straight to his room and took a shower to wash off the stress of the day. Half-way through his shower he suddenly realized... his house was empty.

Normally, there was the sound of children playing and running about. They would greet him as soon as he opened the door. The smell of dinner would also be wafting out of the kitchen. But there was nothing to greet him when he came home today. No wives. No children. No food.

Worry settled over him and he tried to quickly finish his shower. Once he was dressed, he ran downstairs to investigate. As he rounded the corner to go into dark the kitchen, he suddenly kicked something. It was probably another one of the soccer balls the boys left out. A wet soccer ball too. Looks like Grizelda and Jane will have to do some extra cleaning tonight when he finds them. He found the light switch and turned on the light.

To his horror, the soccer ball was not a soccer ball at all. It was Jane's head. As well as blood smeared all over the kitchen. The rest of her body was nowhere to be found and the head looked as if it had been burnt. It also looked as if someone had chewed her head off with sharp and jagged teeth. On the table, however, there was a plate of food. He cautiously came closer and realized that the food was in the shape of little bears. They were not just any bears, though. They were two of his little boys.

He ran out of the kitchen while being overcome with shock, despair, disgust, and sadness. He drove straight to the police department and told them of what happened. They didn't believe him at first, but he brought them to his home. A couple of them ended up having to go outside to hurl.

The police confirmed that the body parts found were of his first wife and children. But they didn't know he had another wife and another pair of twins. He couldn't really tell them that because polygamy isn't really a thing these days. So while the police investigated, he set off in hopes of finding the rest of his family.

He searched all night and was about to give up until he drove across a river and saw a body floating on the river. The shape looked familiar and he hoped it wasn't true. But it was. It was the body of Grizelda floating on the stream. She had drowned in the river.

He looked around for his children, but they were nowhere to be found. The children rarely left the sight of their mothers and they should have been around the area. Oddly, he came across a bridge and there was a woman named Elaine guarding it. He asked her if she saw two little deer children come by. She denied seeing anyone. He continued to search for days for the boys, but the search came up fruitless. Where could his children be?


Two fawns.
Photo by Erin Shipley. Source: ErinShipley.

Author's note: For this week, I retold the story of Marriage: Bear-Woman and Deer-Woman. In the original story, there were two wives: a bear and a doe. One day, they were out and the bear wife decided to kill the deer wife by biting her head off. She brought the head home and threw it into the fireplace while watching it burn. One grotesque detail was that the heat caused the eyes to pop. The children of the deer wife realized that it was their mother's head and decided to kill the bear children. They brought the bear corpses home and gave it to the bear wife and she unknowingly ate the children. A chase ensued with the bear wife ending up dying with the help of a crane.

My story was sort of a continuation of the original story. The father was nowhere to be found in the original story, so I decided to have him come home to find his home in a disastrous state. I also gave the wives names: Grizelda was the the bear wife and Jane was the deer wife (because Griz- resembled Grizzly and Jane Doe resembled Doe). I also gave the Crane a name, Elaine. I wanted to show a dramatic, yet modern scene of what would happen if this had happened in the human world.

Bibliography:
"Marriage: Bear-Woman and Deer-Woman" by Stith Thompson from Tales of the North American Indians (1929). Source: UN-Textbook.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Week 10 Reading B: Native American Marriage Tales


READING B:
So the girl and her dog had some puppies together. As a result, the family decided to leave her for dead, but a crow saved her. Then she found out the dog babies could turn into humans and taught them how to hunt. They got really good at it, and the village people decided to return. Wow. 
There was a deer hunter who had wives and children. He came across some tracks and met a woman who basically forced him to be her husband. How does that happen? So he left his wife and kids for a deer woman. Then he went and hunted for his deer family. It turns out the deer are cannibalistic and eat their own kind. But wait.. they revive back into deer at the end. 
The stories continues and the couple decide to return to the land of people. They had a son and he became a great hunter and taught the people how to hunt deer. 

A deer and its young.
Posted by Halie Barton. Source: Pinterest.

There was a really poor girl who had some turkeys and told them of her problems. The wonderful turkeys understood her and wanted to help her. 
This part of the story is similar to the story of cinderella. Except the turkeys were the mice. This part was quite cute. I hope that she will not betray the love of her turkeys in the end. 
It turns out she did betray them. Sort of. She ended up coming back too late from the festival and they left her. She was reduced to what she was before. 
So there was a girl who had an evil stepmother. She ventured out and wanted to run away but ran into a lodge with four men who were her relatives and they gave her some strawberries, new clothes, and the power to spit gold. The stepmother sent her own daughter to try to get the same, but the girl was stuck up and so they gave her the power to spit out nasty toenails. LOL! 
So she who spat gold got married to the chief's son and got pregnant twice. Both of the time, the stepmother was the midwife and she killed both of the infants and gave the girl a cat and a snake as her "babies." How twisted. Then she told the husband to kill his wife and he agreed.
The bride's children had actually survived because her dog ended up rearing them. However, the stepmother found out and poisoned the children. The dog then went to the sun to try to revive them. 
He managed to save the children and they revived. One had a sun mark on his forehead, and the other, a moon mark. Then the truth was revealed in the end and justice was served! I'm glad there was a happy ending. 

Week 10 Reading A: Native American Marriage Tales

READING A:
So what happened here was that a young man "took advantage" of a cow/buffalo and she gave birth to a son. I'm unsure as to whether the son is a cow or a human or both because how could he talk to humans if he was just a calf? It looks like the man eventually came to love his family so much he died to get them back.
This story was extremely dark. So the bear killed the deer wife. Then the deer children killed the bear children. Why were there two wives? Where was the husband in all this? I think I can write something about this. Maybe have the husband come back wondering where in the heck his family went.
Okay... so some guy's leg gave birth to a child. Then this bull comes along and wants to marry the child. After a few tries, he got her.
This part tells us why bulls have shorter horns (than they did before?) and why they are hunted by humans. So the wife ran away from the bull and got up on a tree. He found her and started ramming the tree with it and breaking his horns. Then he got stuck in the tree and died. The rest of his herd ended up with short horns because he made them ram the tree so much.
So then an evil moving rock wanted to marry the girl. The girl and her family escaped by using a ball to bounce themselves to the stars. This tells the reason as to why rocks no longer move.
There were two girls who each wanted an eagle and a whale husband. They got their wish and found out that it wasn't the best life and abandoned ship.
There was a man who had some random person taking care of his house. Which is kind of creepy and weird if you ask me. He then spied to see who it was and it turned out to be a fox who told him she was his wife. Then over time, she started smelling bad and he asked about it and she up and left.
A man was fishing and happened to kill a killer whale. Then the friends of the dead killer whale took revenge by capturing his wife. The man got help from a shark to get his wife back. 
So many things happened in this story. The wife was cheating on the husband with a giant snake. I don't even know how. Then the husband killed his wife and fed her to his children. He left the head there and the children ran away after realizing what they did. Then in the end, they made some lions kill him. What did I just read?
A woman fell in love with a bear. Her little sister saw what happened and told the family, causing them to kill the bear. The older sister made her little sister get the flesh of the bear and all was well after that... then one day they were playing and big sis got touched in the wrong place by little sis and big sis ended up killing a ton of people. 
This story basically finished with the older sis getting killed. Then it was tied with the constellations
Constellations.
Source: Starryskies.