The next tale about the stonecutter had a very good moral as well. It shows a man how he should value his normal life, because it can quickly be taken for granted.
After the stonecutter was a story about a woman who had great beauty. It is a reminder to stay humble and that good things will come your way in time. I liked this story because it showed how hard work is valued just as well as outer beauty.
The next story is about an envious neighbor. I like that it starts with a dog, because I love animals and love when they are included in tales. However, I was very unhappy that the dog was killed by the evil neighbor. I think that the overall moral of this story is if you are patient and treat others with kindness you will be rewarded, whereas if you allow your hatred to overflow you will be punished.
This fifth story is about a man and his wife, who is very greedy. He saves a little sparrow (again animals in the story makes me happy!) and is later rewarded for his kindness. The sparrow turns into a woman, who later offers him a present at her home. He takes a small chest and it is full of gold and jewels. The wife seeing this sets back to the sparrow/woman's home and takes the largest chest, but is rewarded with poisonous serpents instead of gold. The moral of this story similar to the one above, appears to be if you let your greed and hatred consume you then you will be punished for it.
The last story of this unit was about two cats. I particularly liked this story because it discusses the love story of two cats who find a home with a princess. I think that I like this story mostly because it is the only true love story of this batch of readings and one of the first true love stories I have read in our readings total. The two cats looked so happy in some of the images for this story!
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| A picture from the cat story from the stories |
Japanese Fairy Tales by Andrew Lang
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