Three Wishes by Ricardo E. Alegria And Juan Bobo: A Folkloric informational system by Sarai Lastra

When first reading these three tales I was surprised by the uniqueness of the morals within them. Before getting to these morals I would like to discuss how these tales, unlike the ones we have read in the past, are different because they have a hidden moral that one must search out in order to find. The first fable, Juan Bobo, the sow, and the chickens, was indeed an interesting one that caught my eye for its humor. The moral or message was unclear to me at first but after reading Juan Bobo: A Folkloric informational system  by Sarai Lastra I understood the story as a whole more clearly. The character of, Juan Bobo, at first glance seems foolish beyond compare to the point where the reader may be confused of the purpose of the story but by reading the second reading for this week I understood the purpose instantly. The moral, to me, was that someone that seems so straight up incomprehension can indeed be smart enough to have a deeper motive and understanding. The other two stories were far less complex for me. In the second tale titled The Ant in Search of Her Leg the moral was easily found unlike the other two tales. The moral of the tale was that above all the powers of the world is God and even the most insignificant creature, like an ant, is in need of God. The third tale was very confusing to me for the moral was seen but I don't know what its significance is. The last stories moral, I believe, was that one can not hide their true self for long before they are discovered and stripped of their mask. I don't know if this is the true message or if there is another (which there probably is) but what I really would like to know is what you think the moral of the story is? Do you agree with me or is there another message entirely? 

Living Folklore by Martha Sims

In this essay Martha Sims begins with a introduction that seemed to shock not only myself but other students in our English 1012 class. From reading some of your blogs I can assume that a handful of you (including myself) were a bit surprised by Sims opening paragraph for it was both defensive and angry sounding. Continuing through the chapters I learn why the author feels this way about Folklore and its misconception. The author feels that Folklore, as a form of spreading ones ideas to a group, is not informal or untrue but on the contrary does not have anything to do with the legitimacy of it all. Fast forward after a couple of pages of rants I see more clearly why the author feels the need to explain the “definition” of the word Folklore. Folklore definition, while generally important, is not what Martha Sims seems to feel the need to focus on. The author chooses to pinpoint how Folklore, even if interpreted otherwise, is of extreme importance to people and to society in general. Sims brings a great amount of importance to the role of Folklore but to understand this complex role she first explains how we can identify what is and isn't indeed Folklore. By definition Folklore is a form of transmitting “unofficial” knowledge to people of a group. Sims tells us that Folklore is important mainly because it has such a great impact on our society. In everyday life we use Folklore for simple tasks. To my dismay all this, although informative, was not fully helpful to what Folklore has to do with me in my life and how it not only affects me but how it can also help me grow and as person and college student. I don't know if you'll agree with me, but, in reading this essay I feel as if I have more questions now than ever before that I feel should be answered.

Fables and their importance

Upon first glance fables look like a short story with animals, usually, as the main characters. With a more purposeful eye one can look into each fable (or in this case at the end of each story) and find a moral that may pertain to his/or her life. To me personally one fable stood out more than the rest. The story titled "The boy and the filberts" struck of great importance to me. In this short story a boy digs his hand into some sort of jar filling up his hands completely. To his dismay his hand can not get out of the jar for it is to filled. A bystander tells the boy that with a hand that is halfway full you can get your hand and what you desire out. This taught me a powerful message: in life we might think we can handle a certain amount of challenges but to our surprise we can not. Life teaches us not to take too much upon ourselves even if we may believe we can cope. In  "Aesop, Aristotle, and Animals, The role of fable in human life" by Edward Clayton he explains that fables are not only stories for our amusement or even for a moral but they have an entirely different purpose. In this writing the author starts by telling us three fables. In each of these fables we can clearly see that the message or moral of the story is that evil will prevail and that at the end strength is stronger than the power of knowledge and good in general. The author explains that these fables are not just for us to read and admire but to understand its true message. With many descriptive details the author comes up with evidence pointing to the fact that fables are in a sense the crossroad between humans and animals. The stories portray animals with a humans characteristics but on the contrary the fable is there to show us the profound differences between the two. A fable, as Clayton describes it, is a way to show humankind what we can be and what we should become. In the stories the animals don't take, for example, voice into account but in our world the human voice is a rather powerful tool of restoration and/or destruction. From fables we can see that humans, although more "fair" and political than animals, do have room to become even greater. From both readings I have learnt the power of short to the point fable stories and I strongly agree with Edward Clayton in many ways.