Extra Credit Reading: The Voyages of Sindbad Part A
I love the first person perspective of these tales! It takes me right back to the Odyssey. Similar to Odysseus, Sindbad has a rough start from the get-go. I can't imagine mistaking a whale for an island...it must have been huge! Regardless, that would be terrifying. Worse than that would be having to drift all night holding on to a piece of wood. Lucky for Sindbad, it seems like someone is watching out for him and he drifted to an inhabited island. Sindbad's adventures remind me a bit of a show that I am watching right now called HunterxHunter. In the show, hunters are pretty much treasure-finders or adventure seekers who go on epic quests and stuff like that. Sindbad reminds me of this; he casually mentions how he is exploring king's islands and the sort. Sindbad's story is different from Odysseus' in that Sindbad DOES make it home, and he willingly wants to go back out there. I can't tell if Sindbad is lucky or unlucky. After getting left behind by his mates, he comes across a giant bird which takes him from the desolate island and drops him in a new unknown place. Sindbad was smart to gather up diamonds, knowing that merchants or other humans would come down to collect them. Sindbad seems like a very go with the flow kind of guy, accompanying the merchants after they found him in the valley. In his defense, I am not sure if he had a choice. He was pretty much stuck and homeless in a new dangerous terrain. He is pretty lucky that the merchants were around at all! His story reminds me a bit of a children's story I had to write in second grade called, "Fortunately, Unfortunately." In these stories, I would write about a guy who had something great to him, and then he would get down on his luck. For instance, a man would get a plane ticket to Spain. Great! Unfortunately, he fell out of the plane. Fortunately he was picked up by a skydiver who, unfortunately dropped him into an alligator-infested lake. You get the idea! Poor Sindbad is just chugging along. Good for him though--I haven't heard him complain once! His encounter with savages and then a giant would be fun to write about. The giant reminded me a bit of Polyphemus. It seems as though Sindbad is always narrowly escaping though comes back rich. He's a good man and gives it away, though he can't seem to stay away from this life of adventure. I can't wait to read more :)
bibliography: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).
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