Week 9, Extra Reading Diary: Brothers Grimm (Hunt) (First Half)

Brothers Grimm (Hunt)

Hansel and Grethel
I've read this story before, but I don't ever remember the parents being the one's who sent the kids out to the forest in the first place. What a sad situation to be in! The rest of the story is semi-similar to what I have heard before. So, the evil step-mother made the father lead his two kids into the woods so that he and his wife would have more to eat. Their first attempt failed because the children had overheard the step-mother's plan, but the second time, it worked. They came upon a house made out of bread and sweets. The witch disguised herself as a sweet old lady that just wanted to feed them. Obviously, she wanted to EAT them. So after the first day, the witch had put Hansel in a cage outback and made Grethel feed him to make him fat. Hansel wasn't getting fat so the witch decided to eat him anyway. On that day, the witch warmed up the oven to "bake some bread" and told Grethel to get in so she could see if it was warm enough. The witch wanted to just shut up Grethel in the over though, but Grethel caught on and the witch ended up getting in to show her it was big enough and then she pushed her in and locked the door. She busted Hansel out of the cage and they both shagged out of there after filling their pockets full of jewels that the witch had all over the house. When they got back to their father's house, they found out their step-mother was dead. They showed their father all the stones that they had stolen. 

Illustration of Hansel and Grethel by Theodor Hosemann. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Thumbling

This story is about a couple that wanted a kid so bad, they didn't care how big he was, so of course, the wife gave birth to a boy that was no bigger than a thumb :) He was quite a sneaky little man and ended up going around tricking people to make money.

Week 9, Storytelling: Together Forever

Pat was a very handsome man who seemed to have it all. He lived in Manhattan with his beautiful and loving wife in a condo right next to Central Park with a vacation house in the Hamptons. He worked on Wall Street and they had all the money, cars, and houses that they could ever wish for. Life was perfect, or so it seemed to everyone else. Pat, however, was miserable. He had been with his wife since high school. He did love her, and she had stuck it out with him through college and all of the late nights at the office as he worked his way up the ladder. He loved her, he really did, but his uncle had just married a woman named Ruby who was half his age and she was really hot. I mean hot, hot. She was young and beautiful and he wanted her. He always got what he wanted, even though he had never wanted another woman before, and he was going to get what he wanted this time too.

Pat decided he would ask Ruby out for lunch in the guise that he was just wanting to get to know her better. Although he did want to know her better, he wanted much more than that. They were in a dark quiet restaurant in a booth in the back corner and had been drinking wine and talking for over an hour past the end of their lunch. Pat figured this was the best time to make his move. Ruby responded just the way he wanted. They ended up renting a hotel room in Brooklyn and spent the rest of the day doing things that I can’t say in this story. When it was time for them both to go home, Ruby turned to Pat and told him that this was going to be a one-time thing and for him not to tell his uncle and she wouldn’t tell his wife. She also told him that if he didn’t keep his end of the bargain, she would tell them both what had happened. Pat agreed but knew that this was not the end of it. He wanted her more than ever now and he intended to have her.

A week later, Pat called Ruby to meet him for lunch again. She refused and reminded him of her warning. He said he remembered but that he just wanted to talk to her. She hesitantly decided to meet him and he immediately started trying to talk her into going back to a hotel with him. She refused and warned him again as she got up and stormed out of the restaurant. Pat sat there and turned over what had just happened in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more angry he got. He refused to let her say no. She was going to be his one way or the other.

One evening a week later, Ruby was coming back from the gym. She opened the door to their apartment and sat her stuff down on the floor. There was something off, but she couldn’t tell what just yet. She yelled her husband's name as she walked into the kitchen and after he didn’t answer her, she went looking for him. When she walked into their bedroom, she screamed. Lying there on the bed was her husband and Pat’s wife, both naked, and they both had their throats slit. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing and couldn’t stop screaming. After she “calmed” down, she called 911 and waited for them on the sidewalk in front of their building. She called Pat next and told him what had happened. He came over immediately and they tried to comfort each other the best they could. After the detectives questioned them and the coroner removed the bodies, she had to go get a hotel room since her apartment was now a crime scene. After she checked in, she took something to help her sleep. After drinking a bottle of wine, she finally was able to relax and drifted off to sleep. She was woken up by her cell phone ringing at 3:00am. It was Pat, she started talking to him about what had happened again and he cut her off.

“I did it for us,” he said.

Ruby didn’t quite understand at first. And so she started talking again about the accident.

“I DID it for US,” he said again, this time with more emotion in his voice.

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Did Pat kill them, or have them killed, so they could be together? She sat there with sheer panic on her face.

“Ruby, I did this for us. Now we can be together,” Pat said in a sweeter voice.

“I didn’t want this though,” Ruby replied. She was in tears now and was in the beginning stages of a panic attack. She had to hang up and call the police she thought before this got out of hand.

“Ruby, don’t you dare think about calling the police. I will kill you if you do. I will kill you no matter what you do unless you agree to be with me.”

Ruby was stunned. Pat was crazy, he was really certifiable. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

“I take it from your silence that you need a little time to make a decision, but I know what it will be. I know you want to live. We will have to wait an amount of time so it doesn’t seem out of place that we are living together, but you will be mine,” Pat said very calmly.

Pat hung up and Ruby sat there staring at the phone. She didn’t want to die. She sat there and thought about suicide and actually calling the police, but at last, she picked up her phone and texted one word to Pat. “OK”

An arial view of Central Park by Central Park Conservancy. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Author’s Note: This story is based on Patussorssuaq, Who Killed His Uncle from the Eskimo Folk Tales Unit by Knud Rasmussen. This was one of the most coherent stories from this unit and I thought it would be the best one to try to re-write. This story is a simple one of jealousy and how doing something wrong can come back and bite you in the butt or as some put it Karma. I wanted to put a modern spin on the story, kind of like a Boil Your Bunny/Fatal Attraction feel but reversed but also not in the exact same way. In the original folk tale, Patussorssuaq got his comeuppance for coveting his uncle and his wife, he even ended up losing the stolen wife. We all know real life isn't always that cut and dried though and that sometimes bad people get away with bad things. I decided to change the ending to be a little more realistic into how this would really go down. Hopefully he will get what is coming to him in the afterlife. I intentionally left the ending open so that the reader would leave wondering what really happened to them in the end. I also decided to shorten his name to Pat since his real name is a mouthful.

Bibliography: Eskimo Folk Tales by Knud Rasmussen, 1921.

Week 9, Reading Diary B: Eskimo

The second half of the Eskimo Folk Tales was a little better than the first. 

Patussorssuaq, Who Killed His Uncle
This story is about a man who wanted his uncles wife for his own, even though he too had a wife. The uncle and his wife were getting ready to move and Patussorssuaq couldn't bear to be away from his uncles wife, so he killed his uncle. After killing his uncle, he went back to his tent to kill his wife, but she had already ran away to her family. Somehow there was a boy in the tent when Patussorssuaq got back and he told him his wife was gone but he didn't know where she was. He took his uncles wife as his own but she died soon thereafter. Then his uncles spirit came back as a fox and killed Patussorssuaq.

Angangujuk
This story is about a man, woman, and their son. One day the man went away on a hunting trip and the boy was playing around the house while the woman cleaned hides. The boy disappeared and when the husband returned, he though that she had killed him. He was getting ready to kill her, but she begged him to look for the boy first. It turns out that the boy had been taken by inland people. The man and woman had taken a shaman with them and they put a sleeping spell on the people that had their son and then snuck him out and back home.

Drawing of Inuit boy rom Godthaab. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Week 9, Reading Diary A: Eskimo

I decided to read the Eskimo Folk Tales unit for this week. I found it really hard to read these stories since half of them seem to have no point nor a logical progression from one sentence to the other. It's just been really weird. Anyway, on to my diary.

The Coming of Men, A Long, Long While Ago
This story is about creation. It says that the earth fell from the sky and children were born from willow bushes. And then man wanted a dog, so they made a leash and went stomping on the ground and dogs appeared. Then, men did not die, but just grew old so they could not see, or walk, or lie down and the earth was overran with men, so there was a flood. They also lived in the dark so they made a compromise to die and have light. When they died they covered the bodies in rocks. 

Nukunguasik, who Escaped from the Tupilak
This story is about a man with no wife (which they all seem to be about) who went kayaking and ended up on a beautiful island. He found a man there talking to something in a hollow telling it to bite Nukungasik to death. Nukungasik snuck up on the guy and scared him and he fell in the hole. The man had been talking to a Tupilak, which seems to be like a Jewish golum. After the other men went to look for him, the Tupilak had already ate him.

(Mask used by Eskimo shaman in causation of illness. Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

The rest of the stories are just really strange.