Essay for Week 6: Tibetan Folk Tales

This week I chose to read the Tibetan Folk Tales. There were several stories to read in this unit but they were all pretty short and easy to read. I thought the stories were fun and full of adventure! My favorite thing about the Tibetan Folk Tales as a whole, is that there were many different types of stories told. Some of the stories were about ghost such as, The Man and the Ghost. There were stories about trickster animals such as, The Tiger and the Frog. There were even stories that were Fairy Tales, for example, The Two Little Cats. My favorite story would have to be The Two Little Cats. I loved that there were two small kittens who were simply minding their own business and found something they were afraid of. There were many animals, a cow, dog, snake, and objects, peas and needles, that were willing to protect the little cats. It was a team effort to take down the evil Handre when it came to the cats house. The team members fulfilled their duties and saved the cats. I love happy endings! A lot of the stories in this unit seemed to have unpredictable endings. They ended very abruptly and never in the way I imagined them to end. For example, in The Tiger and the Frog, I did not assume that a tiger would be the one running away from a frog. The frog and the fox outsmarted the tiger more than once when a tiger could easily defeat these other animals. Also, in the Man and the Ghost I thought the Ghost would be the character that scared the man and won. However, the man outsmarted the ghost by lying in a field of barley because the ghost was afraid of barley. The ghost then left the man alone and gave him an opportunity to become rich. An overall theme I noticed in these stories was that the “underdog” character of the story always won or prospered.

(Two Kittens: Wikimedia)