Hayley's Scrunchie

Bibliography: British North American Tales, Source Wolverine: Flickr This time I decided to do my notes by analyzing the animals portrayed in these stories. A lot of them have the same animal mentioned more than once so I’m curious if certain stereotypes are portrayed for the same species in different stories. Fox warrior, swift footed annoyed at Hare for being slow great smoker, and  banished hare to the brush hungry, quick eater not one to die easily, knows how to escape smart, clever, enemies with coyote Hare warrior, swift footed liked to take his time and smoke his pipe went under bushes Turtle lives alone, needs help from big animals crowd of little turtles ready to fight Smart, tricks eagles into “drowning” him “Turtle cannot be overpowered by anyone” Deer kind to help turtle fought a tree and broke horns? Bear clumsy, tries to help turtle kidnapped a woman, tried to keep her captive Co...

This week I decided to focus on names. The names of people, places, and the worlds in these stories are all unique. I find it very interesting that the majority of these have absolutely zero named characters, or the names are just Bear or Raven. I think it says a lot about the culture of these stories and how whenever they are being passed down the names aren’t important, but the messages are. It allows the storyteller to focus on the most important parts and not minor details. Beliefs - Bella Coola Bella Coola is a cool name, pun intended, and it was hard for me to find an actual definition. It mainly means people who live by the Bella Coola River, and can refer to the Nuxalk people. “Afraid of Nothing” is a the name of a goddess who created the world and lives in one of the upper heavens. Creation of the World Wyandot Big Turtle and Old Toad are the names of the characters in this story. There are not a lot of named characters in these stories, rather general term...

Usually when writing I try to avoid too many tropes, because I hate reading about the damsel in distress or the knight in shining armor over and over again.   This website helped me learn it is impossible to avoid tropes because almost everything has been done. There are some pretty fun and weird ones, and I included them below. (This dog isn't crying, because he can't, but he is sad. Source ) Crying Critters : Animals crying is a trope, because they don't actually do that in real life. I never really thought about how animals don't cry from their emotions, and many of them don't even have the proper body parts to cry anyways. I have probably written in one of my own stories about animals that a baby lion started to cry, and didn't even realize it was a trope. Cell Phones Could Have Solved This : This is a trope when the main plot point of the story could have just been solved if it took place in a time period where cell phones were invented. I think t...

(Arctic fox. Flickr ) In these stories I will be focusing on beautiful sentences. I really like the way these Eskimo stories are told. The translation is kind of funny because some of the sentences are very blunt and short and others are long and beautiful. A lot of the sentences I chose are short but I like the phrasing of them In each you can clearly picture what is going on. “She took her bearskin coverlet over her, and went and sat down on the shore, close to the water, and let the tide come up and cover her.” “The people of old times thought it an ill thing for men to kill each other.” “Thus punishment falls upon the man who kills.” “After that the eagle and the girl lived together on a ledge of rock far up a high steep cliff.” “And at the same moment the sea was lashed into foam, but the umiak had reached the land. And the whale tried to follow, but was cast up on the shore as a white and sun-bleached bone of a whale.” “At last the evening came.” “And n...

Setting: I chose to focus on setting for these reading notes because the stories are told by the Inuit/Eskimo people, who lived in cold environments. Many of the other units take place in jungles or forests with an average climate, so it's interesting to see if there's any differences up north. There is a lot of imagery of lakes, rivers, and other bodies of water. There is also a lot on forests and mountains. Polar bear, Wikipedia "A long, long time ago, when the earth was to be made, it fell down from the sky. Earth, hills and stones, all fell down from the sky, and thus the earth was made." This story doesn’t have a specific setting, but it is talking about the formation of the earth overall. “One day he r owed northward in his kayak , and suddenly he took it into his head to row over to a big island which he had never visited before, and now wished to see. He landed, and went up to look at the land, and it was very beautiful there .” You can easil...