Week 5 Essay: Recurirng Motifs Turkish Fairy Tales

The two stories that shared a common motif were The Fish-Peri and The Crow-Peri. As you can already tell, both stories involve some sort of Turkish peri - meaning fairy. In both narratives, a beautiful animal is captured by some human who is ignorant of the animals true form. In the Fish-Peri, the animal is a lovely fish that the young man can neither eat nor sell because of the joy he finds in gazing upon this beautiful fish. The fish helped the young man during the day by transforming into a maiden and cleaning his house while he was out. In The Crow-Peri, the crow is caught in a trap by a boy. The crow tells the boy that if he releases it, it will help the boy catch an even better bird. The fish and the crow continue to help the young man and the boy through their various tasks throughout the stories by having the males make very strange requests. I'm not sure how the authors decided that things like "forty wagons of wine" or a "bolster" would transform into ivory or feasts, but in the stories that is what happened! Another thing that the two stories had in common was that they both ended with a happily ever after via the marriage of the youth to the fish-peri and the boy to the crow-peri. A final and more broad motif that I have noticed throughout a majority of the Turkish fairy tales is the very common time frame of forty days and forty nights. Either the subject is given only forty days to complete some task or the subject celebrates for forty days and nice - how nice would that be? I'm not positive on the origin of this idea, but I think that it would be an interesting thing for Professor Gibbs to add to the introductory notes of the unit. Overall, I thought that this unit was one of the more enjoyable and easy flowing units I have read thus far.

(Yellow-edged Lyretail: My idea of the fish-peri: Image by: Derek Keats)

Storytelling for Week 5: You Do What You Can For the Ones You Love

(William Randolph Hearst Castle: photo by Matthew Hodges)

"Mark, darling!" Julie called to her husband. "I got invited to go to the country club with Marie this afternoon, so I'll be back in a few hours!"

"Alright sounds good," Mark said as he gave his wife a kiss goodbye.

Mark and Julie have been happily married and lived a somewhat comfortable life for the past twenty years. Julie was a secretary at a company down the road and Mark worked at a small industry the next town over. They made just enough money each month to keep up with their rent and buy groceries. Although Julie tried her best to be content with her lifestyle, she couldn't help but always be jealous of her best friend, Marie's, life.

Marie's husband was the CEO of his industry, so they lived the life of endless luxury with gourmet dinners each night and frequent trips to the country club.

This was Julie's first time going to a fancy country club and what she experienced finally made the envy she held concerning her friend's life surface.

When Julie got home that evening she confronted Mark and said,"darling, you know that I love you, but I cannot live this way anymore. This may seem harsh, but I cannot stay with a man who is unwilling or incapable of climbing up the work ladder and securing a more respectable position with a much larger paycheck. If you cannot obtain this than I'll have no choice but to leave you."

Mark was heartbroken. He had never missed a day of work and has always been the employee his boss could count on. He had no idea how to climb up the work ladder, but he had to try. He loved his beautiful wife and had no intentions on letting her go. Mark needed some time to think, so he walked to the local coffee shop to sip on a cortada.

As Mark was sitting at the table becoming more and more depressed as nothing was coming to mind on how to appease his wife,  Mark's best friend, Jeff walked into the coffee shop.

Upon seeing Mark unsettled, Jeff questioned him as to why he was in despair. Mark told Jeff what had occurred between Julie and himself.

"Man...I'm so sorry! That is an awful predicament to be in, but hey I tell you what. I know Marie and her husband, and maybe I can talk her into giving you some pointers," Jeff said soothingly.

The next day, Marie called with a list of instructions for Mark to do at work that would insure his promotion. Within the next two months, Mark was working as the industry's floor manager. Six months after that, Mark was the supervisor and was finally making enough money to apply for a membership for he and Julie at the country club.

(Rooftop Pool: photo by Charlie Anzman)

Author's Note: I based this story off of The Soothsayer from the Turkish Fairy Tales. In the story, a nameless married woman falls prey to envy when she visits the bath and discovers a soothsayer's wife is there being gazed upon by all of the other women. The married woman returns home and threatens to leave her husband if he too does not become a soothsayer. I decided to make this story more modern and have the bath be a country club and the desired job be a high position at an industry. I made the rich bath woman be the rich country club woman, Marie, and the poor envious woman a low paid secretary, Julie.Luckily for the poor husband (Mark in my story) ends up succeeding at obtaining the higher paid job and keeping his now happy wife.

Bibliography: "The Soothsayer" from Turkish Fairy tales by Ignacz Kunos. Web Source: Un-Textbook

Reading Diary Week 5: Turkish Fairy Tales

Turkish Fairy Tales

Fear:  It's interesting that this boy is so determined to find what many of us face on a daily basis. He seeks something that is solid in form and not an emotional state, which is why he cannot discover it. I found it funny that the one thing that did scare him was only a slight moment of shock as a pigeon flew out at him.

The Fish-Peri: It made me think of a college student trying to figure out what their skill sets were and how they could apply them to a particular future job. The progression of the story, however, made it to where it could be difficult to formulate a storytelling project from it. It is interesting that in most fairy tales there is always some sort of task(s) that the protagonist must accomplish.

Patience-Stone and Patience Knife: The Persians certainly like to tie "forty day" or "forty nights" into their stories, which is interesting. I could maybe use this story for the storytelling assignment and have the young girl tell it from her point of view. This story certainly had a much nicer ending than I had anticipated.

The Imp of the Well: The poor woodcutter has an absolutely awful wife who did nothing but bring him misery. It's funny how she ended up being the one to help the woodcutter in the end even though she was not there in physical form. The idea of her alone was enough to scare off the Imp!

The Soothsayer: A man and his wife were living a comfortable life until the woman saw what she did not have and envy took hold of her. She threatened to leave her husband if he did not obtain the profession that would give her the life of the woman that she saw. I could make this into a modern day story.