Essay- Tricksters and Fools in the Wizard and His Pupil

In the story The Wizard and His Pupil, the trickster and the fool are combined in both of the main characters. The wizard spends his time tricking people and stealing there money. He turns himself into different animals and has his pupil sell him. After he is sold, the runs away from the owners and turns himself back into his natural form. He was a fool in some aspects because he trusted his pupil when he should not have trusted him. His pupil turned him into the fool when his pupil decided to trick his master. The master made the mistake of teaching the pupil what he knew and it ended up backfiring on him.

The interaction in this story is pretty minimal. The two characters mainly interact with each other and they seem as if they are balancing each other pretty well in the beginning. The wizard tricks the boy's mother into giving him the key when the boy turns himself into a bathing establishment. The boy is turned into the fool in this case but later on in the story, the boy turns himself into a bird and the wizard turns himself into a falcon and chased him. The story alternates between who is being the trickster and who is being the fool. It ends with the master thinking he has succeeded in tricking the boy but when he leaves one grain, the boy turns back into himself and he kills his master.

I think that the two characters balance each other out throughout the story, each one capable of fooling the other. In the end, the story showed that there can only be one trickster and the pupil turned out to be it while the master turned out to be the fool. I think that the wizard made the mistake of trusting someone whom he was teaching to take over tricking people. The pupil learned the lessons well and was able to out trick the original trickster.

The Wizard and his pupil.