Week 14 Essay

For this week, I chose to read Ryder's Panchatantra. This reading was fantastic. The majority of the stories were really fun and cute. I actually found many of them to relate to a few Shel Silverstein poems. For instance, my favorite story was Mouse-Maid Made Mouse. It was actually a really cute story. In the story a holy man and his wife are unable to have children so he uses his magical powers to turn a mouse into a girl and they raise her as their own. When the girl turn twelve-years-old, they realize that she is of age to be wed so they decide to find her a suitor. The holy man calls on the sun, but the girl does not like the sun. So the holy man calls on that superior to the sun – the clouds – but the girl does not like the clouds and the holy man calls on the wind (which is superior to the clouds). The girl does not like the wind, so the holy man calls on the mountains. The girl does not like the mountains, so the holy man calls on a mouse. When the girl sees the mouse she recognizes him as her own kind and asks to be turned into a mouse.

I think I like the story so much because it is one of those happy ending sort of stories. Anyway, it made me think of this poem by Shel Silverstein that goes…

Masks by Shel Silverstein (Source)

I found the poem to be indicative of what the story was trying to say, kind of like be yourself and do not hide who you really are.

The only problem I found with all of these stories was the random poems, or quotes, that were imbedded in them. I understood that the stories were supposed to be teaching tools to learn intelligence, but sometimes it would be confusing and not really completely necessary for the story. Sometimes the stories themselves taught a lesson and they did not really need the quotes in them, so it was kind of like a lesson inside of a lesson rather than a story inside of a story.