Reading Diary B: Jamaica Anansi Stories

I really enjoyed reading Jamaica Anansi Stories this week. I have never read any Jamaican stories before this. It was a bit of a challenge to get used to the dialect in the stories, but they were still great nonetheless. 

Horse and Anansi: This was a very interesting story. Anansi seems to play the trickster quite often. He is always looking out for number one. He also seems to have a way of talking any other animal into doing whatever he advises to do. I was glad to see the goat come back and redeem himself in this story. I had thought from the previous stories that he was one of the more gullible animals in the culture. He even outfoxed Anansi while he was trying to pull the same scheme that he had pulled on the horse. I really like how Anansi is capable of being tricked himself. I was beginning to think that he always had his way in every story.

Fire and Anansi: This was another intriguing story about Anansi. He seems like such a foolish character, especially in this story. He heeds the advice of no one and thinks he is right. I really enjoyed seeing his wife, the ground dove, warn him about how bad idea it was to have fire over to their house. It was very gratifying to see that the dove was right and escaped getting burned. I am interested by the dove since she is the wife of the very difficult Anansi. The dialogue between the characters was very difficult to follow in this one. 


(Ground Dove)