Essay Week 7: Tricksters and Fools

For this weeks reading unit, I chose to read about the Stories from the Congo. Having only had time to read half of the unit this week, I do not know if I got the complete feel for how the people from the Congo tell stories or their way of thinking, but what I did read I did not particularly like. Yes, the stories were very similar in terms of having tricksters and fools as other countries stories that I have read thus far in the semester, but the ones from the Congo were particularly gruesome. They had a very wild and literally animalistic  way of describing their forms of trickery and what consequences follow those forms incur. For example, in the story of The Antelope and the Leopard, the fool was the prideful leopard and the trickster was the metamorphic antelope. The antelope knew that they only way to beat the leopard was in a game of intellect, not strength. The antelope ending up slowly killing the leopard by the leopards own hands until he was just a legless, eyeless, toothless, and worthless body consumed by blind love. It was a very grotesque and not particularly enjoyable story. Then there was also The Turtle and the Man that was not exactly my favorite story either. In the story, the ox, who was good hearted and willing to help the turtle until he was blindsided and murdered by the greedy turtle. Even when the turtle met his consequence for his trickery, it was still through the means of murder.

(Leopard Attack. Web Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I guess that I am a sucker for things like happy endings and fairness that this unit really rubbed me the wrong way. Hopefully my next pick will either be something that is happier or has a more playful version of trickery and foolishness.