The Rabbit Seeks Wisdom

Candice McCarty

Professor Morgan Peters

English 200-08

December 15, 2011

            Life isn’t easy, you have to put in every ounce of strength you have, and then some to even scratch the surface. Nothing comes easy, and everything costs a price. Whether that price is money, product, time, or effort, you can’t receive until you give. The story The Rabbit Seeks Wisdom is a perfect example on this topic. It is an insightful way to take a concept and teach it to others.

            In the story the rabbit asks God for more wisdom. He, like many people want to take the easy way out of a situation. Now he is told by God that he has to complete 3 difficult tasks in order to receive his wish. He isn’t just given his request because what kind of story would that be? The story is his journey of completing the tasks of obtaining the scales of the great ocean fish, milk from the wild cow, and teeth from a living crocodile.

            The rabbit in his quest completes each task with flawless perfection, tricking every single participant into giving him what he wants. He returns to God and presents him with his treasures. In return, God tells him he cannot give him more wisdom because he already possesses enough. The rabbit didn’t see that he was given impossible tasks, and by completing them he already had the wisdom he was seeking. When you think deeply into the story, you see that God simply gave the rabbit the push that he needed to find what he truly wanted in himself. Compere the rabbit had the tools necessary; he just needed someone to teach him how to use them.

            When you think of a story like this being told to a village, or community, why do you think it was told? It is a type of motivational tale to get listeners to take the moral and apply it to their daily lives. It could also be to teach the youth the values that their older superiors want them to learn. Just like “slow and steady wins the race”, they wanted children, and everyone for that matter to learn from this story to look within themselves for the strength they were given.

            Relating this story to college students like us, you think about all the assignments that we do to complete our degree. How many of them do we actually do, or do we just “bullshit” our way through it just to get it done? Think about all the students who get caught plagiarizing essays, how long did it take and how much money did it take to do that? When in reality it would have taken just as much time and less money do just to it from the start. We spend so much time trying to get through the pages of a term paper, when if we just concentrated on the material it would just come easy to us. This is our degree we are paying for it, and if we don’t do the work why are we even here?

Dog Pays a Visit to God

Candice McCarty

Professor Morgan Peters

English 200-08

December 15, 2011

Way back when, civilization what not as advanced as we are today. They had far less knowledge than we do, and far less technology. Because of these vulnerabilities, and other reasons, people told tales and myths as to why certain things happen. In the tale of, The Dog Pays a Visit to God a group of dogs after consuming carrion (an herb) decided to pay God a visit. God however found the scent of such plant very unpleasant and unaware of where the smell came from, thought that one of the dogs had defecated on his rug. God and the dogs thus tried to find the culprit of the mess by sniffing each other’s behinds, which the story tells us they are still doing so to this day. Clearly this is not the actual reason why dogs sniff each other’s behinds, but for lack of knowledge as to why this happens, this story was created to help the people understand to the best of their abilities why. In the end humans strive to understand the main question of why.

Just as I mentioned above, they civilizations from the book, had little to know knowledge as to the things that we know today, and the only thing they could do to understand life was to create stories to get them by. Griots in early West African culture were usually the ones to tell these stories to the community during big events, or simply just to pass the time. Creation stories, myths, and tall tales, they were all created to ease people’s mind as to why the world is why it is, and it has been going on for as long as people have been able to communicate. Not only to these stories serve as knowledge, they served as entertainment for the community.

            This doesn’t really hold a moral to learn from it is more of an entertaining way to understand a concept. If we had no other entertaining way to understand things why else would we remember them? Think about it next time you see a dog sniffing another’s behind, are you going to think of this story, I bet you you will.