Essay: Bad guy in The Crab and the Monkey

This story is from the Japanese Fairy Tales Unit. In the story, The Crab and the Monkey, the monkey is not a very nice animal. He starts off not seeming to be too bad. He makes a trade with the crab. He gives her a kernel of a sweet red kaki fruit in exchange for some rice. The crab, being a generous animal, makes the trade and everything seems fine. She uses the seed to grow a fruit tree and the monkey comes back. This is where we really start seeing the monkey's true character. The monkey asks if he can climb up the tree and get some fruit for himself and he will also get some fruit for the crab. He only throws down the rotten fruit though. He tries to keep all the good fruit for himself.

When he gets down, the crab convinces him to do a somersault and all the fruit falls out and the crab tries to grab some. The monkey gets mad and beats the crab so bad that it nearly kills her. The crab kills the monkey in the end but the monkey shows how horrible he is when he tries to kill the crab.

At no time did I feel sorry for the monkey. The crab was being extremely polite and letting the monkey share what she had but that was not good enough for the monkey. That tends to be the problem with the villains in any story. It does not matter how much other people do for them, it only matters how they can get more. The villains are never satisfied and they don't ever care about anyone but themselves.

The monkey ended up getting what he deserved, the crab kills him in the end. I think this is how the story needed to end because it did not seem as if the monkey would have learned his lesson. He even tries to steal things from the crabs hole when he thinks that the crab is dead. He never showed any remorse and therefore would not have been able to learn his lesson and change. The monkey was just evil and there was no fixing that.

Monkey. Photo taken by Lea Maimone. Wikimedia Commons

This story is from the Japanese Fairy Tales Unit