Week 4 Storytelling: Genie in the Jar

Yellow is my least favorite color.

That wasn’t always the case though! Years ago, I would watch the sun shoot little yellow sparks of light onto the rocks by the shore. The waves were too concerned with their work of gently polishing the rocks to notice how they bounced the glow back out towards the deep. I traveled to places where yellow and brown specks of sand stretched on endlessly toward the horizon. If I wanted, I could chase the yellow of the sun around the globe, but, the way the stars sparkled yellow on a hazy night were always just as endearing.  

Now, yellow just means prison.

The marks on the jar wall tell the story as well as I could. At first, they were neat, delicate, and well-aligned. Each one signified a day. After around a thousand days, the lines became deeper and longer – months.  Soon, another thousand or so marks dotted the room around me. The new ones were haphazard — years.

Each day was the same. The gentle sway of the ocean that I once admired became my daily torment. While, as a captive of the yellow jar, I was free from the assault of the water around me, I didn’t escape the overwhelming pressure of the sea weighing down upon the small container. Before being placed there, I would yearn at times for a moment of silent solitude. How wonderful would it be just to sit and think without interruption or obligation? Such luxury is difficult to appreciate in a state of desperation.

Regardless, I did occupy my mind.

I told myself story after story and imagined each one as vividly as if it were right there in front of me. Sometimes, those stories included how I ended up sealed in this jar, but I usually tried to think about the future instead.  My favorite story, predictably, involved being released from the jar. I thought, “if anyone should free me before a hundred years were passed, I would make him rich even after his death.” I told myself this tale, and I held on to hope.

I counted and recounted the etchings on the wall. 100 years.

I was feeling more despondent than ever.  Surely I haven’t been rescued because I just haven’t promised enough! “I would give all the treasures in the world to my deliverer!” I declared to the lid of the jar.

Another hundred lines joined the already crowded ranks.

I had tired of my own stories, quit believing in my fabricated hope, and stopped carving the mocking lines into the wall. In my anger, I swore that if anyone let me free, I would only give them the option of how they wanted to die. 

As it turns out, hundreds of years of solitude is no help to combatting cunning! After brief glimpses of freedom that was anything but yellow, I was back in the jar. This time; however,  I sent myself there.

Yellow Chinese Pottery 

Author's Note:

When reading the unit on Arabian Nights, I was particularly intrigued by the story of The Fisherman. The namesake character is severely impoverished and needs to get a good catch in order to provide for his family. However, after three tries, he has caught nothing. Then, on his final cast of the day, the fisherman pulls up a yellow jar in his net. He assumes that it must be valuable, so he decides to take it back to sell. Suddenly though, thick smoke pours out of the jar and a genie emerges! The genie proceeds to tell the fisherman about what he resolved to do for whomever freed him over the course of his hundreds of years in the jar. The fisherman is quick witted, though, and in avoiding his own death, asks for the genie to verify that he really can fit in the tiny jar. Once the genie returns to the jar to prove a point, the fisherman quickly replaces the lid, trapping the genie once more. Throughout all of 1001 Arabian Nights, I wished that there was more insight into the genies' personalities and backstories. So, I was excited to take the time to explore what the fisherman's genie could have been thinking during his many years of imprisonment.

Bibliography:

The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).