This week I wanted to get ahead and dive into the European Unit. The Czech Folktales immediately stood out to me because of my ancestry in Poland. The Polish and Czech have many similarities culturally, so I wanted to see what kinds of story telling techniques and story plots the Czechs told.
The first story in this part of the reading was Sleepy John. I thought that the character development in this story was really cool because initially you have John who sleeps all the time. This gets him into some unusual and difficult situations, but he manages to overcome them. By the end of the story, Sleepy John has obtained the entire kingdom. As a whole, I thought it was really cool that a character that was initially thought to have some negative characteristics turned out to be an awesome and smart character. Maybe he was just tired all the time from all the crazy situations he gets himself into.
The next story was Silly Jura. This trend in the title names started to attract my attention because they use a lot of adjectives in their storytelling, which makes it more fun to read. Also in general the writing was easy to read because of the translation, so that was really helpful. Silly Jura was a cool story because again it started off presenting the main characters in a negative connotation, who took advantage of Jura calling him "silly." But it ended up being the brothers who were the "silly" ones in the end. A term came up in this reading that I looked up: burgomaster. According to wikipedia, a burgomaster was just another name for a mayor of the town.
The final story I want to reflect on is The Waternick. I thought this story was especially cool because it was really similar to the story of Hansel and Gretel. In fact, I bet that that was an inspiration for this story and the Czech just put their own cultural influence on it. The main difference between this story and Hansel and Gretel was this character called the Waternick. In the Czech culture, a waternick is apparently a water demon, who in this story ends up capturing the children and putting them to work for him and his wife. In the end, the story was happy and the children made their way back to their mother.
Bibliography: The Key of Gold by Josef Baudis, Czech Folktales Unit
The first story in this part of the reading was Sleepy John. I thought that the character development in this story was really cool because initially you have John who sleeps all the time. This gets him into some unusual and difficult situations, but he manages to overcome them. By the end of the story, Sleepy John has obtained the entire kingdom. As a whole, I thought it was really cool that a character that was initially thought to have some negative characteristics turned out to be an awesome and smart character. Maybe he was just tired all the time from all the crazy situations he gets himself into.
The next story was Silly Jura. This trend in the title names started to attract my attention because they use a lot of adjectives in their storytelling, which makes it more fun to read. Also in general the writing was easy to read because of the translation, so that was really helpful. Silly Jura was a cool story because again it started off presenting the main characters in a negative connotation, who took advantage of Jura calling him "silly." But it ended up being the brothers who were the "silly" ones in the end. A term came up in this reading that I looked up: burgomaster. According to wikipedia, a burgomaster was just another name for a mayor of the town.
The final story I want to reflect on is The Waternick. I thought this story was especially cool because it was really similar to the story of Hansel and Gretel. In fact, I bet that that was an inspiration for this story and the Czech just put their own cultural influence on it. The main difference between this story and Hansel and Gretel was this character called the Waternick. In the Czech culture, a waternick is apparently a water demon, who in this story ends up capturing the children and putting them to work for him and his wife. In the end, the story was happy and the children made their way back to their mother.
Bibliography: The Key of Gold by Josef Baudis, Czech Folktales Unit
Image Info: A Czech Waternick
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