I read stories from the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments” by
Andrew Lang. I was not sure what I was getting myself into until I started
reading these stories!
The first section of the “Arabian Nights Unit” was very
confusing for me. These stories were confusing because they were “stories
within stories….within stories.”
The main story was about a king who loved his wife very
much. He gave her everything that she ever dreamed of. One day, he found out
that she had been unfaithful to him. His anger led him to kill his wife. Since
he was so upset, he would marry a new woman every night and then have his
servant kill her. This horrific ritual kept repeating and the town soon became
depressed and cursed.
One day, a man decided to sacrifice his daughter in order to
stop the Sultan’s rage.
The daughter saved herself, as well as many other lives,
by telling the Sultan enchanting stories. The stories then had another “story
within a story.” The stories were about talking animals, genies, moral lessons
and so on. Essentially, the stories had no endings so the Sultan would allow
the daughter to stay alive “one more night.”
In this unit, I loved the magical elements and descriptive
imagery. It was a little hard to stay on track with the stories, but I found
them very entertaining.
I believe the story ended “within a story.” It did not
exactly say what happened to the daughter, but I am assuming she stayed alive
and saved her life (as well as many other lives).
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