- How are we to understand Shahrayar’s madness? Does it make sense to you? That is, are male egos in macho societies that frail, or is his a special case?
I can understand Shahrayar’s madness to a degree. Anyone would be angry if they had found their spouse had betrayed them and was being unfaithful, but I disagree with Shahrayar categorizing all women that way, just the same as I would have to disagree with the lovely saying, “All men are pigs.’ It goes both ways. As a male I would have to say that our ego’s are not frail when in public, but can be quite the opposite when not trying to impress everyone around you.
2. Both the vizier and his daughter, Shahrazad, tell tales that surround their human characters with important animals, but the animals play different roles in the imaginative worlds of father and daughter. Compare and contrast the powers attributed to the animal world in The Tale of the Ox and the Donkey and The Tale of the Merchant and His Wife with those described in The Story of the Merchant and the Demon. How may these differences reflect the contrasting visions of gender relations so central to The Thousand and One Nights?
The story of the Ox and the Donkey is a father telling his daughter that there is a possibility that she can be wrong, and he uses animals instead of people to give her an example of what could happen. The tale of the Merchant and his Wife, the merchant just wanted to sulk and die until he heard the rooster talking he realized he is a man and should just beat her into submission. With the story of the Merchant and the Demon the demon was in control and I thought of the demon as a women where the tides had turned and the Woman was in total dominance.
3. Do you believe the penalties suffered are appropriate to the sins committed in Dante’s Inferno? Why or why not?
I believe the penalties suffered are appropriate to the sins committed in Dante’s Inferno because the penalties were in relevance to the reason that individual was in hell. Eye for an eye. I am a firm believer in the golden rule of treating others how you would like to be treated, and I fell that rule can go both ways. When you don’t treat people right then you should be punished by knowing what that feels like in Hell.
I think your idea of the people suffering what they made others suffer makes sense. However, I saw someone else bring up that the punishment of turning into a tree for the sin of suicide seems odd. I agree with that and I don’t really know how that would be “an eye for an eye” situation.