Week 4 Reading Diary, continued: Santal Folklore

The first story of the second reading is called The Jackal and the Chickens. To be honest, I did not really enjoy this story. The whole premise seemed to be killing. I wonder why this is so prevalent in the Santal folklore stories? This is something I would like to look up and investigate further. For my writing, I would not like to include anything like this. It could, however, be a challenge to myself to write a story that I do not particularly write to try and build these skills?

The second story, The Jackal Punished, seemed even worse! The basic storyline was almost the same as the previous; however, the deaths stood out even more because the story was shorter. This made it seem like the entire story was about death. I am not a fan of this type of content.

The Jackal by Artemy Voikhansky

The Tigers and the Cats seemed random to be because I feel like some of the events do not relate. In my writing, I would like to have some flow that keeps the reader easily clued in to what is happening.

One issue with Indian folklore that I have is that it really does confuse me. For example, in The Elephant and the Ants, the moral of the story "not to despise the poor man, because one day he may have the opportunity to put us to shame." I do not really understand how the elephant running with ants relates to a poor man. Something I would aim to do in my writing is to communicate messages that my audience can fully understand so that they do not feel the confusion that I do now. 

After reading these stories, I'm getting the sense that revenge is a large part of Indian culture. Either that, or at least being punished for not treating people right. Each of the stories seems to have some aspect of punishing for wrongdoing, most likely death. 

Source: Folklore of the Santal Parganas, by C.H. Bompas (1909)