Sunday, February 1, 2015
Meghan's thoughts on 1,001 nights
The third and fourth stories read in this series carried ongoing narrative from the first two, which I found helpful to the overall aspects of the stories as it is hard to keep my fact's straight within how many character's are in the story and how much plot development I have to pay attention to. I have no questions for either stories as I found them to be pretty self explanatory. The only confusion I found was within the second story, "The Resolution of the Porter and the Three Ladies" as it was a bit confusing and hard to follow as it wasn't too clear at some points. All I had to do was read it twice and I was fine.
As to what I favored, I definitely liked the third tale more than the first. It was more clear within my head as I read and I enjoyed the narrative a lot more. I also liked the weight it held as it was longer than the fourth story within the series. I found that both tales dealt with love, marriage and conflict which all relates to the body in some way rather it be physically or mentally. The role of Azraq and his body stood out to me within the context of that narrative, as he was able to switch between two forms of self. The role of the mind within the body and the fact that he could switch between two forms of a body was very interesting. Especially when relating to the concept of love, and the fact that he took off his feathers and changed his body and self for a lover. Both stories not only dealt with the body being used to social situations but the body seemed to "get in the way" within the tale of the Mistress. Not only within switching between two forms of the body, which Azraq dealt with conflicts due to that but also the role of changing the Mistress's sisters bodies into dogs. Taking away their body, their humanity, and turning them into animals. They lost their selves completely within the end of that story.
These stories showed me how literature can be used to show us moral lessons about love, relationships, social situations and life in general. How this can be passed down, how it can engage others and pass on one's name and history. All in all, I enjoyed a thousand and one nights. The stories were blunt, intense, engaging and kind of creepy in many ways which I liked.
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I agree with you, I was certainly confused at points in the tales and had to reread to clarify things. There are a lot of characters and I think if we would of read the whole book we would of understood "The resolution of the Porter and the Three Ladies" more. Jumping from tale to tale makes it more confusing, especially because there are stories within stories.
ReplyDeleteThe third tale was my favorite as well. I liked the magical feel of it, but somehow it was still relatable with the struggles of love and family. As I was reading I didn't want to stop. It was very clear and meaningful.
When we first started the class I thought it was strange how much we were going to be discussing the body, I have never discussed tales and novels in this way before. Now, that we are starting to read and discuss the body I understand how important it truly is to the depth of the tales. I think Azraq’s feathers serves greatly towards our meaning of body and how important it really is. Without his feathers fully intact, he was unable to survive. The sisters being transformed into dogs also give us another example of how important the body really is. I enjoyed how the stories were looped together with the dogs bring the moral of the stories to an ever deeper meaning.