Essay: Stories from the Congo

Stories from the Congo unit was filled with interesting topics like supernatural spirits and stories about animals. But what was the most surprising thing I found in the readings, which separated this unit from the others I have read thus far, is there is a lot of death. Not only did a husband kill his wife in The Wicked Husband but a turtle in The Turtle and The Man killed animals. The reasons for the murders seemed rather miniscule in The Wicked Husband. The husband and wife in the story got into a small fight over how much plum-nuts he had cut for her. After bickering back and fourth, the husband took her to the woods and cut off her legs and arms and left her there to die. I know these are short stories, but I wish there was more information to understand why he would go to such extremes. Maybe he had a drinking problem or anger problem? It was a good story, I just wish the story provided more information on the husband. The other story I wish I had information on was The Three Brothers. In the story, there is a woman who gives birth to three boys but decides she does not want them and decides to leave them. What confused me about the story was the lack of information provided in the beginning. It describes that a family lived on the grass and one of the women had three children. Where I get confused is the second paragraph. It does not specify why the woman did not want the children or even where she placed them. In the paragraph, it says she laid them in the grass but where is that? How far from their village where they placed? It also said they got hungry so the children walked across a river. I thought the woman just had the children and they were still newly born. In the entire unit was good but I wish the author provided some important information.

Afrotemperate Forest by Abu Shawka (2010).

Week 7 Storytelling: Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover

Andrew had always been a shy individual. When he was younger, he was bullied because of his small size compared to the rest of the boys on the playground and he also had a speech impediment. As he grew older, his height grew to only 5’4 while the other boys grew to be around six feet, which caused him to get bullied in high school as well. The only thing keeping his sanity was his love for art. Since his youth, Andrew would paint large paintings and work with clay. After years of making art, he realized that art was something he could turn to when he was hurt.

During his years at college, he met a woman who would change his life forever. Annabelle was a blonde female that radiated wherever she went. She had this sort of innocence about her, which was the reason Andrew was so interested in her. He saw her as the bright ray of light on a cloudy day.

The two got married once they graduated but once they settled down in a small house things turned for the worse because Annabelle began to act like she was a different person. She grew very demanding of Andrew as well as selfish. Annabelle would ask to borrow money from Andrew, claiming she is having trouble with money. But in reality, she had enough money from her job but just wanted to get extra cash. 

Andrew was aware that Annabelle was using him for his money but he was such an introvert that he couldn’t stand up for himself. Also, the fact that he was alone most of his life and he finally found someone that ‘presumably’ wanted to spend the rest of their life with made it hard for him to say no. Even though he was scared to speak up, his subconscious thought otherwise.

One afternoon Andrew was painting in his art studio in the basement. Like usual, the environment was still and quiet so he was able to focus on his painting. But the sound of frustrated footsteps pounding down on the stairs that led into the basement caused Andrews eyes to gaze off the canvas as he gripped his paintbrush tightly. Once Annabelle came down the basement stairs, she stood between Andrew and the canvas and placed her hands on her hip with her brow raised.

“Did you forget what day it is?” Annabelle said with a stern look.

Andrew sighed, “Are you going out with the girls again?” He said in a monotone voice. Not only was his voice monotone, but his face was still. With a cold stair, his eyes fixed into hers, he waited for her reply.

            “Yes!” She exclaimed then sighed in annoyance, “sometimes I wonder why I am with you.”

With those last words, something snapped in Andrew. The memories of being hurt swarmed in his head, causing him to suppress his consciousness and let his subconscious become in control. He stood up quickly and grabbed a large empty can with a firm grip and hit Annabelle on her forehead, which knocked her unconscious on the ground. Andrew would not have noticed his wife was already unconscious because he didn’t stop hitting her after the first hit. Wack, wack, wack. Then silence.

Once he became conscious from the rage, he fell to his knees. “W-what…have I done,” he spoke softly as he scooted his knees to get closer to her. Looking down at her grotesque face filled indents, gashes and blood, he picked up her head and ran his fingers threw her long blonde hair as he cried harder than he had ever cried in his whole life.

Then the real worry came about, what would he do with the body? He decided to cut up her body into small pieces and bury them in different places around the area he lived in like the forest, parks, other peoples gardens and he would even throw some of the random pieces in the city dumpster.

The following week, Andrew reported Annabelle as missing after she went to the store. To this day, no one knows who killed Annabelle. As for Andrew, he had never felt so free in his life.

Multiple Boy by Stefan Tosheff

Author's Note: My inspiration for this story was from The Wicked Husband in the Stories From Congo unit. The story was about a man and husband who got into an argument. The husband was so mad at her, for such a minuscule reason, that he took her to the woods and cut off her arms and legs then left her. When he returned to town, he told everyone that she went out of town. The wife would sing loudly in the woods that a man from the town heard than told his wife. Once word got around that there was a woman in the woods with no limbs, the Prince ordered his men to retrieve her. Before they could bring her to the village, however, she died. After they discovered who she was, the Prince assumed the husband was the murderer so they burnt him alive along with his dead wife. Reading this story reminded me of a band called Alasana. They had an album called The Emptiness that was about an artist who murdered his wife, Annabelle, but he could not recall his actions. Once he woke up and found her dead body, a voice started to talk to him (in his head) telling him he had killed his own wife. This voice was a separate personality from the main character (he never had a name). Once he remembered he killed his wife, he cut up her body and put it in the floorboard of the basement. So I used the argument from the wife and husband in the story, to the multiple personalty in 

Reading Diary B:Stories from Congo

The second reading of the Stories from Congo unit had more animal stories, which I found fun to read. But I wish I had more information on the violence and sadness of these stories. I feel as though most of them are violent because some of them have at least one character killing a character or other characters. Also, there are stories that are sad. For example, in the story TheTurtle And The Man, the two lived together (man and turtle) and they lived in a village together. The man built a large trap for the both of them but the turtle claimed it was too big. So the man turned the first one into two and the turtle took the biggest trap. As the story progresses, the turtle ends up tricking different animals into doing him a favors for meat form the prey that collected in the traps. Once the animals got upset from the turtle going back on his word, they would try and attack the trap but then would get stuck and die. But the last animal who did a favor for the turtle, the leopard, tricked and killed the turtle. From my understanding of the story, I got a bit confused on some parts from the miss spellings, the man ran saw the leopard in the turtles house and when the leopard was questioned on the whereabouts the turtle, the leopard said he had killed him and the man was fine with it. Another story, The Three Brothers, was a sad and somewhat violent. A mother had triplets and decided she didn’t want them so she laid them on the grass and walked away. The children found a river and that river had a spirit that helped them make their own village and also gave them wives. After years, a man saw the three men in the forest then ran back to his wife in the town because they were the parents of the sons. But on their journey, the mom took a rest and when the men ran into her, they thought she was an intruder so they wanted to kill her. But the river told them to take the woman back to their village and take care of her since she was their mother.

                             

Baby Turtle by John (2008).

Reading Diary A: Stories from Congo

For this week, I chose to read the unit the Stories from Congo. All of the stories in the first half of the unit was interesting but most were very disturbing. One of the creepiest stories was The Wicked Husband. In the story, there was a husband who got into an argument with his wife about cutting enough plum-nuts for her. The argument turned gruesome when the husband took the wife into the woods and chopped off her arms and legs and left her on a table. When the husband got to the town, he told people that his wife was out of town. The wife, still in the woods, sang a song that a hunter was able to hear. The hunter than ran to tell his wife and also told her that she could not tell anyone about the woman in the woods. But word got around and the Prince heard of it. So he summoned some men to go out to the woods and fetch the woman but she died on the way to the town from the woods. But once they found out who the woman was, they immediately blamed her husband so they burned him under the wife’s body. Another weird story was The Jealous Wife because it was about two wives who had children. The child of the younger wife was brighter than the other wife’s child, which made him jealous. So the older child killed the younger and brighter child.   

Waterways and Highways in the depths of the Congo rain forest by Michael K. Nichols