Reading Notes: Jewish Fairy Tales, Reading A
The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on this week was "The Beggar King" by Gertrude Landa (1919). I really enjoyed this story because it showed the importance of having a certain level of humility. In this story, a very prideful king put himself above others and believes that he is the most important being. Then a genie decides to teach him a lesson by pretending to be the king thus making the king live a normal peasant life. The king then goes through struggles and ends up learning his lesson until he eventually returns to be a humble, wise king. I feel as if the plot story is quite common as it starts with someone that has a negative trait/aspect to them which is then fixed by putting them into someone else's shoes. There is also a magical element that allows them to be put into someone else's shoes, in this case the genie, in most stories with this kind of plot. The ending also seems quite typical as the person who had the negative trait to them ends up becoming a great person that ends up helping out or leading others. The style of dialogue and writing is a bit older as you can tell by words such as thou and thee.
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