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.

Reading Diary B: Turkish Fairytales

This is one of my favorite stories from the second half of the Turkish Fairy Tales unit.

The Wizard and his Pupil: This story was one of my favorites mainly because it took a very odd twist that I was not expected. A boy spent time searching for where he actually wanted to be. He had run away from everywhere else and his mother had ran out of options. He decided to go with the wizard and he learned many things from the wizard. I feel that the boy got too cocky and I was sure that it was going to backfire against him. When his mother gave away the key when he turned himself into a bathing establishment, I thought that it might be the end of the boy. Then he was able to turn into many other things and when he turned into the millet pulp and the wizard turned into a cock and ate up all the millet pulp. I thought that the story would have been good to end there. The boy was cocky and the wizard got his revenge. The story took another twist and the wizard had missed one grain. The one grain was enough for the boy to return to his youthful self and he then killed the wizard. Good things happened for the boy but I did not think that the story should have gone like that. I still think that the wizard should have been the one victorious in the end but it did catch my attention by going in a direction that I was not expecting.

The wizard talking to the boy's mother from the Turkish Fairy Tale Unit

Reading Diary A: Turkish Fairytales

These are some of my favorite stories in the Turkish Fairy Tales unit.

Fear: A boy is told by his mother that she is fearful, so he sets out on a journey to find Fear. He goes through numerous situations in which most people actually would be fearful, and yet he still does not experience fear. He was determined to find it and searched in many places and asked many people. At the end, he finally experienced fear when the bird flew out of the lid. I liked that this boy experienced all these things that most would find fearful, and yet he was not scared until a bird jumped out at him in the end. It seems that if he was not afraid at any other point in the story, that he wouldn't be afraid of a bird. I guess that different people fear different things and what is not scary to one person may be terrifying to another. It was an interesting story.

The Fish-Peri: In this story, a fisherman catches a fish that turns out to be a maiden. They plan to wed but a Padishah did not want the fisherman to have the woman. He wanted to be the one to wed her. He gives the fisherman all these seemingly impossible tasks but the fisherman and the maiden come up with ideas in order to accomplish them. They are able to get married finally. I liked this story because it shows what extremes some people will do in order to be with those they love. The maiden helped the fisherman in every aspect and so they were finally able to be together. I like it when people stay together even when there are so many obstacles in their way.

Fish. Photo taken by Brocken Inaglory Wikimedia Commons