two feasts

Candice McCarty

Professor Morgan Peters

English 200-08

December 15, 2011

Have you ever deliberately done something cruel to someone else? Everyone does, it is human nature. Natural enemies like a dog and cat, a snake and a rat, and like this story, a spider and a tortoise will always be at each other’s throats trying to outdo the other. In The Feast on the Mountain and the Feast Under the Water folktale, it shows just how you can outsmart someone, but to make sure that you don’t get outsmarted back.

            In the first Feast, the spider Anansi invites all the animals to come and eat with him. However when tortoise arrives, Anansi comes up with a plan to trick tortoise so he does not get to eat. Before eating that the table, Anansi tells his guests that in order to eat at his table, all the animals must wash their hands and cannot eat until they are clean. So Tortoise goes down to the river and washes his hands, yet when he returns back to the table his hands are dirty again from the climb up the mountain. He sees what Anansi is trying to do and decides to leave the table and goes back home.

            Now when it was Tortoise’s time to throw his feast, he told everyone that they would be eating that the bottom of the river where he lived. When Anansi heard this he knew he would never be able to sit down at the table since he was so small and light he would simply just float on top of the water. So he stuffed his jacket pockets with rocks, and sank down at the table with everyone else. When Tortoise arrived he announced to the table that all guests had to remove their jackets in order to eat at his feast. When Anansi heard this he tried to reason with Tortoise to which he explained that is he had to follow the rules of his table, in return Anansi had to follow the rules of his.

            So in the end, Tortoise came out on top, and in life one must realize that although you might be able to outsmart someone, there will always be someone who is smarter than you. Also this story teaches you that if you are cruel to someone, one day it will come back to haunt you. Now if Anansi hadn’t been so cruel to Tortoise, than he would have gotten to eat at his table with everyone else instead of getting nothing to eat. Being cruel never gets you anywhere far, and instead of gaining what you might want, you only end up hurting yourself.