The Voyage Under the Water

Candice McCarty

Professor Morgan Peters

English 200-08

December 15, 2011

                      Wouldn’t life be so much easier life would be if you didn’t have to die? Think about it, you wouldn’t have to say goodbye to those you love, you wouldn’t have to have a last goodbye. The reality of the matter is that death is a fate that we must face eventually and there is no coming back from it once we go down that road. Our ancestors knew that and now so do we. The Voyage Below the Water is a story about the devotion one man has to his wife even after her death.

Our story begins with a country man named Bordeau who we learn has a wife who died, and how he grieved over her even after her funeral had been finished. He wouldn’t eat, he was silent and his life was taking a turn for the worst. He only agreed to turn his life around if the local Voodoo priest brought his wife back from beneath the water with the ancestors. So off the priest went on his three day journey to find the wife and came back with great news for the man.

            As much as the man had hoped, the priest did not return with his wife, but instead a message from her. She said, “For when one is dead, he is dead, but when one is alive, he must live.” In return she gave the priest one of her gold earrings to show her husband that she was in fact the true keeper of her message.

            From that day on the man lived in peace knowing that he would one day be reunited with his wife, when it was his time to go. But when you think about it, that really is all we have left, hope. Hope that one day we will get to be in peace with those we have lost before. We believe this to be true now, just as our ancestors did when they wrote stories like this.

            Life is a gift, and one that should be treated as such, and not a thing we can just throw around. Some of us that only have days to live, treat life so much more preciously than those who have a hundred days to go, we must appreciate living for what it is worth. Take pride in living, and after letting a sufficient amount of time to go by for grieving, move on after a death and remember that it is not the end, but simply a pause in your life until you will see them again.

            This story also teaches you not to waste your life. The wife knew this when she told the man to live. She didn’t want him wasting his life away. You could also take this as a lesson to not waste your life. Make something out of what time you have left. Don’t sit around and waste it doing stupid things that in the end amount to nothing. Make something of yourself, and prove to be the best you can be, some of us do not get that privilege while others waste their time as if it was limitless.

            This story has a lot more meaning to it than you might see on the service, it shoes depth. The characters are well defined and they play important roles in the story that give it its genuine quality. Authors of these stories had something to say and they really gave it their all in trying to convey that message to the reader. Their job was to tell a story, and it was one hell of a story if I do say so myself. 

The Woman, the Giant, and the Vulture

Candice McCarty

Professor Morgan Peters

English 200-08

December 15, 2011

 Life is full of questions, why am I tall, why do I have brown hair, why does Susy have prettier clothes than I do? Some questions are easily answered say by Google or a textbook, but back in ancient times, answers to these questions were not so easily found. Like mentioned before answers are found through stories, and the story The Woman, the Giant, and the Vulture is no different. Here the characters struggle with trying to find the answers to the questions they ask.

The first character we come across in the story is a woman. Her character is seriously flawed in that she frequently finds herself pregnant all the time. The next character is a giant who is upset over the fact that he is so large. The third character is a vulture who seeks the answer as to why he is the color black. All three characters seek out the wisdom of God in order to find the answers to help ease their thoughts and suffering.

            The woman is showed from God a scenario of a hen with a flock of roasters. He highlights to the woman how the hen is perused by all the roasters, yet she gives in to none. He points out to the woman to take advice from this hen and quick simply, not give into every man’s desires with which she encounters. Basically he told her to stop being promiscuous. One could say this can relate to many college students, and that given we all make mistakes that we are not proud of, we should stop after the first mistake because if you learned the first time, don’t do it again.

            The giant on the other hand is given a completely different scenario where he is placed in a room where a dead baby is lying in the middle of the floor. He is simply told that if he was that baby he wouldn’t be here today to complain about simply his large size. He emphasizes the fact that life is precious, and not to be taken for granted, and to happy that you are living, when some are not as fortunate as you. Take life seriously, and not waste it doing stupid things like drugs, and abusing alcohol because one might want life to simply feel the air on their face, while others are out falling drunk in the streets.

The vulture is given no explanation to his question, but the story tells how the narrator of this story stops in his narration, and when asked what became of the vulture, his response was simple, “Lift up his tail and kiss his ass.” The meaning to this quote I am most certainly unclear, but it might be a reference as to why black people are black and white people are white. It doesn’t give a direct answer because simply there is no answer and there will be no way to ever come up with one on our own, it is not in our nature to understand the “will of god”. The comment might be made as a pride aspect to saying well we are what we are and there is nothing wrong with that and you should be proud of who you are and what color your skin is. Either way the story tells a lot of life lessons through the eyes of many developed characters.

The man, the Snake and the Fox

Candice McCarty

Professor Morgan Peters

English 200-08

December 15, 2011

“Bad things happen to good people”.  Isn’t that what they all say? Or as one story says, “All good things must be repaid with evil”. The Man, the Snake, and the Fox tells of a story about unfortunates, gratuity, cleverness, and evil all in its short content. Never the less its story depicts a truth that to this day holds true. Our story begins with a man who along his way comes across a snack who is trapped beneath a rock. Out of the kindness of his heart he rescues the snack from his death only to learn that the snake is out for his life. They make a pack and thus they journey on their way to find the truth in that “All good things must be repaid with evil.” If the man finds the snake’s words are wrong, he can go free, if not, his fate is set and the snake takes his life.

            On their journey they come across a donkey that states that yes the quote be held truthful. He shares about his life spent serving a master who beats him afterwards and after much pleading to get one second opinion, the come across a fox on the road that is willing to help in the debate. When asked about the quote, the fox asks to be taken to exactly the same spot on which this story took place, to get a full glimpse of the situation. After positioning the snake back beneath the rock and securing he is immobile, they flee the scene. The man thanks him rescuer with the promise of a chicken every so often when the fox may pass by and relieve his hunger.

            The fox, in return to the man’s very generous gift, comes to the farm every night, and abuses his gift. The man has no other choice but to send a pack of dogs on the fox in order to be freed from the excessive chicken killing. So what did we learn? Yes all good is repaid with evil, and people can be cruel and unjust in welcoming a good deed. It is basic human qualities to want to help, but when others have a darker side to them, your good deed is untimely paid for with evil intentions. This might not be the case for everyone, but it does shine some light on the situation that the story is trying to convey.

            Think about this is your own life. You like a girl, and she has a best friend who your friend finds attractive. After you help him out with her best friend he decides to go after the girl that you like. Is that right? Of course not, but it is no surprise that this can happen. You should repay another good deed with kindness, not foulness, yet it is true that not everyone follows this motive.  

            One last thing I want to mention is that I found it rather interesting that they depicted the fox as a clever being. I was always under the impression that cleverness portrayed in foxes was an Americanized concept and in fact I was wrong.  It makes you wonder that if this concept was captured in literature so long ago, what else of our culture is from the African American folklore. Makes you think about our culture and how much of it we have taken from other people.

The Singing Tortoise

Candice McCarty

Professor Morgan Peters

English 200-08

December 15, 2011

The Singing Tortoise is a tale written in A Treasury of African American Folklore by Harold Courlander. The story in itself is not very long in length, but teaches several qualities that humans possess. Most of these qualities roughly being the more unsatisfactory ones but yet some are pleasant in content. The story tells in itself the many different qualities that humans possess through the actions that the people in the story project. Whether or not this is how the story was meant to be portrayed is one thing but this is how I take into account the story and what is says to me.

            The story begins with a tortoise and its journey to a garden where he meets a flock of birds. These birds invite him to come along and stay to drink with them, and when the tortoise passes on the offer for fear of the farmer Pierre Jean, they offer him their wing feathers so that in case the farmer caught them he too could fly away. To me this symbolizes the quality of human’s generosity. If you think about it, people can be very generous when it comes to helping out someone who is in need, even if that may be for a stranger, not everyone is so cold. As the story progresses the farmer does indeed find them and immediately the birds take back their feathers and fly away leaving the tortoise helpless. This to me symbolizes human’s characteristic of being cruel and selfish. Yes you may find that some people are very generous and kind, but then there are others who can be nasty, and uncompassionate. In a matter of a few sentences, the author speaks of both sides of a human character at complete opposite spectrums.

            The farmer when he finds the tortoise and attempts to “beat him” shows the side of humans that in modern times you see much more often, aggression. He shows no immediate hesitation but heads straight to aggression with the helpless tortoise, which most people today do as well. He then upon finding out that the tortoise is in fact a singing one, he attempts to exploit his talents for money, showing another not so pleasant side of human: greed. He takes what he has and tries to make more off it, just like the majority of people these days, like find a penny and try to make a dollar off of it. The tortoise does in fact win the battle on this one by outsmarting the farmer’s wife. I am not fully sure if this is saying that humans in fact can be easily outsmarted or if it is making that reference strictly towards woman, that part is unclear to me, but depending on what time this was written or spoken in villages, that may be the case.

            The story ends with the tortoise escaping but coming back to safe the farmer who is about to be killed from the lack of tortoise he promised could sing. This shows compassion although only on the tortoise side, which again I am not sure of the tortoise himself represents humans or not but if he does, than yes he shows compassion that some humans possess. There is also a reference here to a president of the village who is not so kind of a ruler. Again the origin of adding this to the story might be to project that rulers are not always kind to their subjects, but again who really knows what anything means in this story.

            The fact that this all boils down to is that humans are a very deep, and complex species and very unpredictable in nature. One minute the generous man helping you cross the street could pickpocket you as you get onto the sidewalk. We are a ruthless, greedy, kindhearted, generous species all with our ups and downs, good and bad sides, but would we be an interesting species if we weren’t so complex? That is the question we must ask ourselves.