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Native American Hero Tales - Reading Diary B

In the second half of the Native American Hero Tales unit, I read the stories of Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away, The Son-in-Law Tests, The Jealous Father, and Dirty-Boy. Of these stories, I found The Jealous Father to be the most interesting. This story was similar to “The Jealous Uncle” in the first half of the unit. In this story, though, a father becomes jealous of his own son and tries to desert him on an island. The boy finds a walrus to ride through the water to the mainland, which happened to be sent there by the boy’s mother. He rides the walrus through the water until it is shallow enough for him to stand. The boy’s father sent a storm, though, which ended up killing the walrus as soon as the boy got off of it. On the shore, the boy encounters an old woman that was sent by his mother. This woman tells him of the dangers he will encounter on his way back to his village, and how he can escape it. Some of the situations that he gets in and his ways of escaping the situations are very interesting. First, he comes across a tent with two old blind women that use their sharp elbows to stab visitors to death. They tell him to sit between them, but he places a bag there instead, causing them to stab each other to death. Next, he must dig a hole and hide in the ground to avoid hunters and their dogs. The dogs find the boy, though, so he sticks a stuffed ermine out of the hole. The hunters see this and kill their dogs for lying to them, which seems a little extreme. The boy gets away, though, and eventually makes his way back to his home, where he kills his father and then he and his mother turn into birds and fly away (which seemed kind of random to me).

(Picture of a boy stuck on an island. Source: Wikipedia) 

Native American Hero Tales - Reading Diary A

For week 10, I chose to read Thompson's Native American Hero Tales unit. In the first half of the unit, I read The Jealous Uncle, Bluejay and His Companions, Dug-From-Ground, and The Attack on the Giant Elk and the Great Eagle. I really enjoyed the story of the Jealous Uncle. This story is about an uncle who tries to kill all of his sister’s sons. He kills her first two sons, but he is told that the third son is a girl so that he will not kill him. This story has a lot of action, as the uncle eventually finds out that the child is a boy and tries to kill him. The boy is smart, though, and he lives through four different attempts at his life. In the uncle’s last attempt to kill him, he places the boy in a wooden box and sends him out to sea. The boy lives and is discovered by the great Eagle people. He lives there for a while before the chief of the village learns about his past. The chief gives the boy his wings and tells him to fly to his village and bring his parents back. The boy did fly to the village, where he took his revenge on his uncle and then proceeded to bring his parents back to the village with him. One thing that I really liked about this story was the character development. The author did a great job of giving the uncle a dark and evil personality, while the boy stayed optimistic throughout the story and always believed that he would survive his uncle’s plans to kill him.

(Drawing of a boy with wings. Source: deviantart.com)

Eskimo Folk Tales - Reading Diary B

The first two stories of the second half of the Eskimo Folk Tales unit were focused on the penalty for killing. In the first story, a man is envious of his brother in law for being a better hunter than him. One day, while they were out hunting, the man killed his wife’s brother. When he came back, his wife’s mother said that he would pay for what he did. Eventually, a monster that turned out to be the mother in law killed the man. The message of the story was that if any man killed another without good cause, a monster would come and kill him. The second story was very similar to the first. A man killed another man because he wanted to be with his wife. And like the first story, the man was eventually killed by a wolf (which happened to be the ghost of the man that he killed) for what he did. The third story, titled “The Wife Who Lied”, is about a woman who married a man of another tribe. When she went and visited her own tribe, she lied and told them that they were not treating her well. The tribe reacted by killing all of the women of the other tribe. That tribe then got revenge on the other tribe by killing all of them. In the end, the woman who lied was also killed. All three of these stories seem to send messages that if one does wrong to innocent people, they will pay for their actions. These stories were all short and straight to the point, making them very easy to read.

(Drawing of Eskimos hunting seal. Source: Wikipedia)

Eskimo Folk Tales - Reading Diary A

The first story of the Eskimo Folk Tales unit, The Coming ofMen, was an interesting read. It tells about the beginning of earth and man, which is a controversial and much talked about concept. I have heard many arguments about this, but the Eskimo folk tale tells a side I haven’t heard before. In this folk tale, the earth fell from the sky and men came forth out of the earth. This tale also talks about how the earth became overpopulated and then there was a flood to reduce the population. It also includes a couple sentences about how men found dogs, which seems to be a big part of the Eskimo culture.

I also really enjoyed The Woman Who Had a Bear as a FosterChild. This story is about a woman who raised a bear cub in her home. The bear was frozen at first, but the woman thawed it out and it came to life. The bear then grew up by her side, playing with the children in the village, but not harming them. The bear grew so big that it began to hunt with the men. The woman told the bear not to harm any man unless the man attacked the bear first, and the bear always listened to whatever the woman said. Living in the village became dangerous for the bear though, as some men wanted to hunt it. The woman had to send the bear off to live in the wilderness, which was heartbreaking to her. I really like the happy and heart-warming mood throughout most of this story, but it does become sad at the end when the mother sends her bear away for its own safety.

(Photo of a polar bear. Source: Wikimedia)

Commenting Review Week

Overall, I have enjoyed the commenting assignments in this class. I feel like it is a good way to get to know my classmates, since there is no face to face meeting involved in the class. I think the comments are very helpful when writing my posts, especially the storybook posts. When I am leaving comments, I usually try to focus on the positive aspects of the stories/posts. If I do notice grammatical errors or things that could be improved, I try to point those out in a polite way. I think the commenting assignments in this class are overall helpful to both the commenter and the one receiving the comments.

(Source: iLikeitFunny)

Writing Review Week

I never did too much writing in any of my classes until this one. I believe that my biggest writing successes so far have been my storybook entries. I have spent more time on those than most of my other writings, and I think they are organized better and flow better than a lot of my other writings. One of my goals for the second half of the semester is to be more creative in my writing, especially my storytelling posts. I think some good strategies for coming up with storytelling posts is to find a story that you really enjoy and use the plot or theme from that story in your own storytelling post. I think the feedback that I have been getting is very helpful so far, and it has really given me some good ideas/tips to use in my writing.

(Painting of Heracles killing Nessus. Source: Wikimedia)

Reading Review Week

I've enjoyed many of the readings for this class, but I must say that my favorites were the Ovid's Metamorphoses units that I read. I have always been a big fan of Greek/Roman mythology, and these units were very interesting to me. I think it is really cool how the myths give us an idea of where some modern words/concepts came from. For example, the story of Echo and Narcissus tells about the origin of the word narcissism as well as echo. I also really enjoy the stories of Heracles and other heroes. I have actually used these units as part of my storybook too. The theme of my storybook is "Tales of Revenge in Greek Mythology", and all of the stories include Heracles. I enjoy reading, but unfortunately my busy schedule doesn't leave much time for me to read for leisure. 

(Painting of Heracles wrestling the shape-shifting god Achelous. Painting by Cornelis Cornelisz. Found on Wikimedia.)