Week 4 Essay: Persian Tales

This week I read Persian Tales from the Un-Textbook. This unit caught my eye mainly because it was something that seemed different and also was something that I had never really been exposed to before. I was excited to try something new out this week and to learn a little more about how other cultures write and to maybe gain some ideas for my storybook from themes or ideas I could grasp through reading this unit this week.

One common character or presence that I noticed to be present in most of the sub-stories in this unit was a wolf. This wolf took on different character roles and personas in each story but overall was a very common central theme. I think that most of the time the wolf was representing something bad or negative in one way or another so it is easy to place association on the animal and character.

Image Source: Wolf

 When I think of a wolf the first few things that pop in to my head are; fear, dark, powerful, large and so on. There is a commonality that can be seen in these adjectives and that is that they are not usually thought of as positive things. Why are we so scared of these animals and why do the stories present the animal in such a negative light? I think that what we read and more importantly how we read and interpret the material at hand heavily influences our feelings towards things. I feel that if the wolf were presented in a different way than the readers may have a different opinion and a different take on the animal as a central character.

Overall I feel that this was a great story and I really enjoyed reading it, I would recommend this story to all the other students in this class!