Week 5 Reading Notes: Bidpai, Reading A

The story of The King, the Falcon, and the Drinking-Cup caught my interest in this unit. The story gets you attached to the King's falcon by showing you the soft side he has for the bird. Then it goes on to make you feel like something is off. This is followed by the king killing the bird for knocking the water out of the kings hands when he is desperately thirsty. This would not have worked if the writer would not have emphasized how dehydrated (and potentially near hallucinating) the king was because we know how attached to the falcon he was. I love how stubborn the king is--that he is extremely dehydrated but refuses to drink any other water than the water from the stream:

"'I have set my heart,' he said, 'on drinking from this stream which runs down the mountain-side'"

 That feels like a very important aspect of his personality. This attitude of his shows even more when he chooses to have his attendant travel to get the best water possible from the top of the stream instead of settling for the feeble drops where he was.

The end is such a tragedy, and the reader really feels it. To know that the king killed his bird, who was actually trying to save the king's life--that is painful. The story sets this up so well by emphasizing details that evoke emotional responses (about the falcon, the king's personality, and his own emotions about the situation).

The story of The Two Travelers also caught my attention. The writing makes sense of both of the traveler's opinions. The reader finds themselves seeing sense in Salem's thoughts that the writing is just made up. Still, Ganem's thoughts that the inscription tells truth is more intriguing and the writing makes it so that tension is built up and you really want to know who is right. I wonder what would have happened if they had both gone? Or what if Salem had been right?

Bibliography: From the Bidpai unit. Story source: The Tortoise and the Geese and Other Fables of Bidpai by Maude Barrows Dutton, with illustrations by E. Boyd Smith, 1908.

Image Information: Falcon from Wikimedia Commons