Stephanie's Blog

After reading the second set of stories from Arabian Nights, which correlate to the Disney's version of Aladdin, I was really intrigued. Again, it's cool that this whole thing is related to  Scheherazade's stories.  I think its interesting how different the two stories, the Disney version and the original version, are even though they are based on the same plot. The Disney version is definitely more designed for the children audience. However, the original story is way more interesting, and full of creativity and irony. It was interesting to me that instead of a lamp, at first the genie arose from a ring. Although there is another genie from a lamp later, it is just cool in general that there is a lot more magic and genies and magical items in this version of the story. I think overall what set these stories apart from others that I've read in this class is the descriptions the writer uses, as well as the general flow of the reading. It could be because its not a direct...

This week I chose to read the first part of the Arabian Nights Reading. I really enjoyed these stories and found it interesting that the 'stories inside stories' theme continued in this culture as well. I enjoyed that the woman in this first part of the story,  Scheherazade , ultimately saw the evil in this man, the Sultan, and wanted to find the root of it and potentially even outsmart him. So, she intrigues him with her stories in order to spare her own life. It was really cool in her stories that she told too that you can see part of their culture coming through. Like the man who was to be killed by the genie in the first story she told the Sultan  he "was gathering his belongings and he freed his slaves and gave alms to the poor." This really says a lot about what really is important to them when faced with fear and adversity, but also they are accepting and respectful of their fate. But then it turns out this man has a similar plan to what Scheherazade is doing t...

Once, there was a simple world. People communicated by talking to one another, and occasionally people would even write down their thoughts onto paper and share it with others. People traveled via foot, and occasionally by animal. But, they didn't really know how big the world really was. The simple world was nice, and many people were only in contact with the people they wanted to be in contact with and they thought it was good. One girl, however, always wondered what the world was outside of her school and neighborhood. She began to experiment in her room and eventually created a prototype of a device that would allow her to talk to her neighbor without being in plane of vision. Her neighbor, was fascinated and they began to experiment together until they could get their device able to reach farther and farther distances. However, the girls parents found out, and they were angry. There wasn't a reason to talk to people that were outside of their contact area. The girl was...