Brittany's take on 1,001 Nights

I agree with what most people said about the character of Caliph. It was a bit difficult sympathize with a character that seemed to have been just thrown in there (since we only read selections from it). I also agree with what many other people had said regarding 1,001 Nights and our understanding of tales. It definitely fits the criteria of a tale, since it had the magical/mystical element,  there were real-life elements (like jealously, lust, and adultery) but they were taken to exaggerated extremes, and one could argue that there were lessons (regarding the aforementioned real-life elements) that we could learn from. Also, in regards to bodies, the males were not really described as well as the females, and the females were described in great detail and were depicted as a great beauty and goddess-like creatures.

I like to look for these things when I read, and I noticed that setting plays a great role in the body of the actual tale. When Shahrayar's wife cheated on him, it was in the garden, and that event is what completely changed the path of the story. Having the climax take place in the garden is extremely important to shaping the novel. Gardens represent fertility, growth and peace, and ironically, the event that had Shahrayar killing people "like an insane gardener, he severed every other head and body, as if he was chopping every stem inthe garden", and by doing this, created chaos and prevented any type of growth or fertility since he began killing a good chunk of the female population. Also: the women are often described as flowers, and the translator/author (how are we referring to this person?...) uses  phrases like "white as a jasmine flower" "day filled with gardenia" and  "blossoming lady"-- to name a few that I remembered-- to describe the female characters. The symbolism and imagery of the garden also represents Shahrayer's eventual growth; Shahrazad's stories allow him to grow as a person and king, thus bringing it all full-circle (as we learned from the film)

Speaking of Shahrazad: I am also weird when it comes to names in stories. I'm not sure if this was just the translation of her name, but the way this particular version is spelled is kind of telling as itself (can names shape a body of a story? I don't know. I'm just going to pretend it does). "Shah" was a title given in the times of the Persian empire, specifically to men only. It is kind of like the title "Caesar", meaning ruler or king, and often is put in one's name (Tiberius Caesar Augustus, Augustus Caesar, Shahzaman, Shahrayer, etc). I thought it was interesting that Shahrazad has the title in her name. No other female character (that we've read anyway) is named this way. This gives the reader a sense of her character, and by giving her a name with Shah in it implies that she is a character of power and that she is Shahrayer's equal (as we later find out from the video, her stories have power over Shahrayer and she is able to change his ways). She is his intellectual superior.

Just a few thoughts. I could be reading WAY too much into this. I was just trying to make my contribution a bit different from all the other insightful ones from my classmates that I read.