Reading Notes - Chinese Fairy Tales, Part A



For the reading this week, I chose to explore the ChineseFairy Tales unit. I chose to read this unit in particular because I am interested in potentially writing a story about these topics. For my reading notes, I am going to focus the story The King of the Ants by R. Wilhelm.

This was an interesting story. To summarize, there was a scholar who went to Emmet (Ant) village. He decided to stay in a home with a beautiful garden. The only thing was is that the house was suspected to be haunted. One night, hundreds of knights (ants) came bursting into the room. The knights, much like the traditional knight, were riding horses. At once the knights pulled out their bows and arrows and caught a large amount of birds. The ants then prepared a feast from their great hunt. The king ant arrives in a lavished processional. Later, the ants fish (out of the scholars ink saucer) and catch a tremendous amount of fish. The king ant then makes a snarky comment towards the scholar which angers him. Out of anger the scholar tried to swat the ants. As they run away, he follows them to their den. Once he finds their den, he built a large fire and smoked them out.

The use of personification in this story is awesome. The author does a great job at creating a true ant kingdom. The details are vivid enough the reader is able to imagine the story as they read. I think the author does a great job making this fictitious and personified story seem so real.



An Ant's Strength

Bibliography: The Chinese Fairy Book, ed. by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens (1921).

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