This week, I will be reading Arabian Nights! I'm excited to learn more about the famed frame tale and inspiration behind one of my favorite movies!
Scheherazade:
At first, I admired the Sultan for how he loved his wife! It reminded me a lot of Esther and her husband. However, my expectations were quickly turned on their head! What did the Sultana do that convinced the Sultan that all women were evil?
Despite the Sultan's horrific actions, Scheherazade courageously requests to be named as his next bride in order to put a stop to the killings. What a terrible choice for a father to have to make! He would have to kill his own daughter!
Our protagonist plots a way to stop the king. With the help of her sister, she will gain permission to tell a story right before sunrise!
This is now a story within a story within a story. The old man becomes friends with the man from the previous story who was to be killed by the Genie. However, the old man negotiated with the genie that 1/3 of the man's sentence be removed if the genie was amused by his story. Similarly, Scheherazade is (hopefully) removing parts of her death sentence with each new story she tells! His story is marvelous! His wife turns his slave and adopted sons into cows in hopes that they will be unknowingly sacrificed. Luckily, the curse was broken. The wife was then punished by being transformed herself.
The next story of the man and two dogs married a disguised fairy that turned his (awful!) brothers into dogs for ten years! Then, another man offered up a story for the last third of the death sentence to be relieved. Luckily, it worked! However, the Sultana promised that even that story was as good as the story of The Fisherman.
The story of the fisherman adds yet another layer to the story within a story set up.
the fisherman nets in a genie's bottles. Once released, the genie threatens to kill the fisherman and then tells his own story; however the fisherman traps the genie and then tells a story of his own! Scheherazade is brilliant in the way that she weaves together the continuing story!
The fisherman and the genie form an agreement and through a crazy series of events, the fisherman befriends the king. The layers continue to build and build until finally, we are left with a king, a prince, a fisherman, a genie, and a brand new kingdom! Scheherazade is brilliant!
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| Scheherazade, the Sultan, and her sister Image Source |
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