Question

(LITERATURE) The story "The Thousand and One Nights" represents a text in which men seem not to tell or understand stories well. Discuss one of the stories (told by either the Vizier or Shahrazad) and explain how it reflects that pattern.

Answer 1

The text of “Thousand and One Nights” depicts the play of wisdom, courage and morality in the unsettling despotic landscape of a fictitious patriarchal regime where the protagonist Shahrazad assumes the responsibility of bringing a social transformation against the brutality committed on women of her society through the uncanny weapon of storytelling.

The multiple layers of narratives which are build by her are an attempt to try to save the girls from being killed by the King as  Shahrazad has her sister, Dinarzad, there in the King’s palace, to encourage the story to be heard another night, thus preventing another girl from being murdered. Shahrazad tries to demonstrate that women shouldn't be killed for no reason and that what the King is doing is immoral. Her tales are also indicative of the general sensibility of the men of her society as in her society as ultimately it is the woman who is beset with the order of narrating stories to the king each night. Moreover, the tales to,d by her tend to lose their effect as he king is unable to understand the hidden meanings behind the tales through which Shahrazad is attempting to pursuade a change of heart in the king’s cats of misogyny.

One such story was told on the 5th night, when Shahrazad tells the story about the man who's new wife turned his old wife into an animal and he accidentally slaughtered his previous wife. The new wife also turned the man's son from this wife into a bull and the man almost ended up slaughtering his own son. Interestingly, in the story, the man was told about the reality by a shepherd’s daughter. Storytelling again is build as a domain of the females. The innuendo is however lost on the king who did not understand this story because Shahrazad is trying to demonstrate that women are good and shouldn't be killed because it was the Shepard's daughter, a female, who saved the day.

Another key element in this story was the inclusion of the demon who challenges to grant the man 1/3 of another's man life for telling an interesting story.

The King also did not understand that he was being compared to the the demon and if the demon had granted 1/3 of a is quality man's live to another man and show mercy upon his life, then the King could emulate this quality as well and be merciful towards the women and stop killing them. Instead, the king shows a greater inclination towards another story and he asks what happens to the man with the 2 black dogs in the subsequent story