Comparing Aesop's Fables, A Thousand, And The Prince
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The next three readings I would like to compare and contrast are Aesop’s Fables, A Thousand and One Nights, and the Prince. I chose these readings because all three of them are focused on lessons being told from stories within a story. In Aesop’s Fables we are introduced to multiple tales that are filled with “funny anecdotes, animal stories, proverbs’, and morality tales. Aesop’s Fables are widely different than The Thousand and One Nights and the Prince because these Fables are primarily focused on only two values.
The two values in Aesop’s Fables are compassion and contemplation. While some of these fables have morals lesson at the end, not all of them do. The first example of contemplation in Aesop’s Fables is in the story of The Fox,…show more content… Although compassion isn’t directly taught through most of the stories, one story does talk about compassion. In the story of The North Wind and the Sun, the story itself does not show compassion, but rather tells us that the lesson we learn from the story is about compassion. In the story “the sun and the north wind were quarrelling with each other as to which of the two of them would be able to make a man disrobe.” (p. 628, Book A) and because of this they both tried to make the man take his jacket off. The wind tried to blow his jacket off by causing harsh winds, but to no avail, the wind only caused the man to hold on to his jacket tighter. The sun on the other hand decided to just raised its temperature, which caused the man to get too hot while wearing his jacket and so he took it off, causing the sun to win the bet. Again, there is no sign of compassion in this story, but the lesson learned is that “the fable shows that to take a humble approach is always more effective and practical than making empty boasts.” (p. 628, Book A). I like to think that the lesson learned in this story relates to compassion because by being humble you’re essentially being compassionate. Sometimes by boasting, about anything, can cause others to feel offended; but most of the time when you’re being humble you’re also making sure that you’re not hurting other people’s feelings. In all of the fables we don’t really see any of the example roles…show more content… Courage is a major value throughout the whole story. Shahrazad ends up showing the most courage because at any point in time King Shahrayar can kill her, just like he did his previous wives. The King, who was betrayed by his first wife, marries a new woman each night for only to kill her that next morning. Shahrazad asks to tell him a story each night they are married, and the king grants her permission. The most important thing that she does is that she makes all of her stories intriguing so the king allows her to tell either the conclusion of the story from the night before or a new story all together. With each night that Shahrazad lives, she is slowly influencing King Shahrayar to become a better leader and a better person. After each night she tells her sister Dinarzad, who often says that her stories are strange and lovely, “that it isn’t as good compared to what story she will tell the next night, if the king spares me” (568, Book