In every story there is a symbol, noticeable or not. These symbols nearly always have a different meaning to each person. For example, take a bird that is not able to fly but does great things in a story after facing some struggles. One person could go to say that it symbolizes that you can do anything if you really set your mind to it. But another person could just analyze what kind of happened in the beginning and say that the bird not being able to fly symbolizes some sort of stolen freedom and that they can never escape from the hardships of life. That is what makes symbolism so great though, it can have so many different meanings just depending on the person. What I found the demon to symbolize in The Story of the Fisherman and the Demon is most likely different from others.
Right away in the beginning it gets off to telling about the fisherman and how he is having no luck catching any fish with his net. Each time before he puts the net out again he recites verses which are like prayers hoping that he will receive fish. The fourth time of him casting his net out he pulls in the jar in which the demon becomes unleashed from and ends up releasing the demon. From the events and conversations that come next I feel that the demon really kind of symbolizes the fisherman’s problems that he had been having in his life. By putting the demon back into the jar and having telling him stories that related to the situation he was able to overcome his problems. In the beginning the demon said that he was going to kill the fisherman and honestly that seemed like what the fisherman was heading towards because he wasn’t catching any fish. When the demon came into the story it was like the fisherman was confronting his problems. After all the stories and tales that were told the demon changed his mind and decided that he would actually help the fisherman by finding him colored fish and making him rich. The fisherman confronted his problems and was given a solution to better them. The fisherman was able to get money from the fish he caught and I’m not a hundred percent sure but I would imagine that 400 dirhams would be a lot, because the demon said that he would make the fisherman rich. So by receiving that money his problems, the demon, were then solved.
I think that this story in whole does have many allegories in it. The demon I think is an allegory to human existence. The whole thing kind of reminds me of the phrase that people sometimes say about life: “facing our demons’ or “dealing with the demons in our life’. I think that the fisherman had to deal with his demons in his life to go on living a good and better life. That is exactly we as human beings have to do as well. We need to deal with our demons so we can go on living a good and better life.
Wow, I really like your interpretation of the demon and what it symbolizes to the fisherman. I think that is my favorite part about this class is reading different interpretations.
Huh, I did not think of interpreting what the demon represents in the context of the fisherman’s reality. It is interesting that there is symbolism in each level of story within the story.
I too also enjoyed your interpretation of the Demon! It is surely not what I would have thought of him at all, nice job. It was neat to look in through this point of view.
Your response was a solid way of looking at the story of the fisherman and the demon and receiving meaning from it. And while I certainly had a response that I would characterize as more face value, yours certainly unlocked deeper meaning. If I had to be honest, I like your interpretation much better than mine, because that is a phrase that we hear all the time about our demons. But sometimes that saying seems so abstract; you presented a way of looking at a story and actually deriving something out of a phrase that people mention everyday. I applaud you for that.