To be honest, I had a lot of
questions in many of the stories in The Chinese Fairy Tales unit. I felt as
though the stories were too short and lacked or withheld information that would
have been useful to understand the stories. For example the story The Cave of the Beast was
ambiguous with information. The husband dropped off the children in the forest
because his wife gave some of the children eggs that he wanted to only keep
between him and the wife. The story should have explained why he got so mad at the children because, in my opinion, he should have gotten mad at the wife
and not the children. Also, why did he take them into the woods? Maybe he had
anger issues or there was chaos in the home with the children. The author might
have intended to beat around the bush because he wanted the reader to read the
story with an open mind. Regardless, the story left me questioning what was
really going on.
My favorite story from this unit would be the Fox-Fire story. The story drew me in at first
because of the title since foxes are my favorite animals. Also, I am writing my
storybook over the journey of a fox so reading this story gave me more a
cultured insight of a fox, which could be useful for me in the future. I think
this was my favorite story because not only was there a clear moral but also
there was a fox in it (I know I am obsessed, haha). The farmer stole the
fireball, elixir of life, and ate it. The fox angrily walked away only to come
back and obtain his fireball until the farmer reached old age and retired from
helping others and receiving all the wealth. I think it is nice that even
though the farmer stole something from the fox, the fox let him have it for years until the farmer received his riches. The fox just patted his back to take
his ball back and walked away without fighting him. This shows me that the fox
is not only a cunning and mysterious creature, he is also wise and patient.
FoxFires by Chikanobu Toyohara (1898)
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