FATHER: Are you ready for bed, Charlotte? It's about that time.
CHARLOTTE: No, Daddy, I don't want to go to sleep. Will you please tell me a story
first?
FATHER: Okay, but only if you promise to try your best to
understand the meaning behind it and then go straight to sleep after. How does that sound? Deal?
Charlotte, “Yes sir! I always love it when you tell me stories!”
FATHER: Once upon a time there was a magical spider man who was in
charge of distributing wisdom throughout the land. This man’s name was Anansi.
People came to Anansi every day for advice. Whenever they came, he then was able to pass his
wisdom down to them. Almost every person in the land had a bit of wisdom.
One day, the people of the land deceived the magical man Anansi and
made fun of him. Anansi was greatly offended by their lack of gratitude for all
he had done for them. He was so angered that he decided that he would take all
of their wisdom back as a punishment. So what did he do? He extracted every single person’s
wisdom and placed it in a giant pot.
Not knowing that his son was following him, Anansi set
out into the forest to hide the pot of wisdom and make sure no one could ever
retrieve it. He decided he would hide the wisdom at the top of a giant tree.
The tree was the biggest tree he could find and was well over a hundred yards tall. Anansi
tried several times to climb the tree while having the pot strapped to his
chest. Every time he tried, he would get a few steps up and then fall. Anansi tried several times but was still not able to successfully climb the tree.
Tree Anansi tried to climb
Photo Retrieved From Flickr
The son, getting sick and tired of watching his father fall,
decided to approach his father who was starting to climb back up the tree. The
boy then called out to his father, who was several branches up at this point, and said, "Father, why don't you just strap the pot onto your back? If you do that, then you will be able to use your arms to grip the tree. Surely that will make climbing the tree much easier for you." The magical man realized that his son had more wisdom
than he did and in a fit of anger purposely dropped the pot from his position in the
tree. The pot fell to the ground and the wisdom flew out and spread to all of
the people in the land. Realizing he had been defeated and lost all of his wisdom, Anansi came down from
the tree and walked home with his son.
FATHER: And that’s the end of the story. What did you
think?
CHARLOTTE: I think I learned that children are smarter than
their parents and that by you telling me this story I was able to stay up an
hour later than my bedtime, just like I had wanted! Thanks, Daddy!!!
FATHER: Kids these days.
The End!
Author’s note: I
retold this story in the form of a bedtime story. The father and the daughter
Charlotte are not in the original story, but I thought it would be cute to add
a father and daughter so she could make a comment to sound more wise than her
father and mirror what happened in the story. I also added these characters so
that way the bedtime story would work. Without the two of them, I wouldn’t have
been able to use this format. Although I didn’t go into detail about these two
characters, their role in the story is essential. As far as the actual story
goes, other than a few details and imagery that I added, the story about Anansi
and wisdom was relatively the same. I chose to stay close to the plot of the
story because I had already added two new characters and I think changing the
plot of the actual story would be doing it a disservice. An important thing to remember
about this unit is that Anansi is generally not a good person and pays for it
in several stories. This is just one example of several where his selfishness
gets him nowhere and his son outsmarts him.
Another important thing to note is, although is is not mentioned in the story, "Anansi" is a word that means spider. Additionally, the son's name is Kweku Tsin. I chose to leave his name out though because I personally find names that are difficult like this to confuse me when I am reading stories. I prefer simple names that I am more familiar with.
Another important thing to note is, although is is not mentioned in the story, "Anansi" is a word that means spider. Additionally, the son's name is Kweku Tsin. I chose to leave his name out though because I personally find names that are difficult like this to confuse me when I am reading stories. I prefer simple names that I am more familiar with.
Bibliography:West African Folktales by William
H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).
I have never heard that story before, but I am sure that your version is better simply because of the little girl at the end. Without that, it would have been pretty boring, but now it just seems like a really funny, elaborate joke. I kept picturing the scene from Mulan where they try to climb up the pole with the giant weights.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am unfamiliar with the original story itself, I am familiar with Anansi the trickster spider! I love Charlotte’s response to her father’s story. It really made me smile and reminded me of a lot of kids I know. His response was pretty good too! She really made a sound point though, because she was able to stay up! I think it was a good idea to add those characters. Good job!
ReplyDeleteI love what you did with the story! I think doing a bedtime story was a great idea and I love the spunkiness of Charlotte. Her comment at the end about what she learned from the story was hilarious. I agree that changing the plot line a lot would do the story a disservice because the story has such an important message within its original plot. I also thought it was smart to leave out the son's name because, just like you, really long and unique names just tend to confuse me as I am reading. You did a great job using simple language in telling the story and making it fit for a bedtime story for a little girl. I found some small grammatical errors. Mostly they were commas missing in run-on sentences; so just small errors that are easy to fix. Great job and I really enjoyed this story!
ReplyDeleteKatelynn, this was a very sweet story. I like the fact that you told the story in a bedtime format, from father to daughter. I think it really worked nicely here. I don't remember this story from the African unit, but I probably read a different section than you did.
ReplyDeleteI feel bad for Anansi. He gets screwed over twice: once by the people and then he loses all his wisdom when he deliberately drops the pot. I kind of wish it had turned out somewhat differently. I wish the people would’ve seen the error in their ways and realized what they had done wrong. But, I’m a hopeless romantic and not all stories have a happy ending.
I liked the way you retold the story and made it your own. Your description while Anansi was trying repeatedly to climb the tree gave me a good image in my head. And let me tell you, the image you chose of the tree didn’t hurt either!! It was the perfect image to choose.
And let me tell you, the little girl, Charlotte, ooooh she’s a little stinker. Getting her father to tell her a bedtime story so she can stay up an hour later. Very, very sneaky!
Great storytelling Katelynn!