Week 4 Reading Diary: Twenty-Two Goblins

This week I chose to read the Indian unit about Twenty-Two Goblins.


I really love the character of the king so far. He always does the right thing.


An example of this is in the introduction when he says to Patience: "Monk, why do you keep honouring me in such an expensive way? Unless I know the reason, I will not take your fruit."


I also really enjoyed the simile about the king's heart: "A brave man's heart is harder than a diamond, and nothing makes it tremble." I have a feeling this is the moral of the king's story and how he evades the goblin.


The way some of this story is phrased makes me giggle. Like how the Coral's suitors in the story of The Three Lovers "feasted on the beauty of her face."


I think it's funny how the monk who is traveling refused to eat in the house of evil, but when the little boy was brought back to life everything was suddenly okay. How was it not still an evil house?


I also find it very funny that if the king knows the answers to the riddles but says differently that his head will explode.


I really like how deep the morals of these stories are so far. For example, "Great-minded people do not waver until they have kept their promises, even at the cost of life."


In the story of the Girl who Transposed the Heads of her Husband and Brother, I think it's interesting how Spotless was so matter-of-fact about his son, White, marrying Lovely. He explained how the two were of equal birth, wealth, and social status, and that was that. There was no concern of whether Lovely wanted to marry White at all.


The way White's brother-in-law when mad with grief and cut off his own head seems very Shakespearean to me.

In the story of The Snake's Poison, I liked how the birds, the earth, and the leaves all lamented the loss of something as Hariswami lamented the loss of his beautiful wife.

At the end of the story about The General's Wife, there is a beautiful line: "No man stops in the middle of a great undertaking." I think this is a very much needed rationale for why the kind keeps going back to get the goblin and why he keeps answering the riddles correctly. It's become the principle of the thing, and if he's going to do it, he's going to do it right.

It seems very coincidental to me that in the story of The Four Brothers, they all learned skills that were related to each other. It's almost as if they planned it that way on purpose.

I really enjoyed the ending of the story because it was so unexpected. The goblin finally stumped the king, but then the goblin turned out to be the good guy and the monk was the bad guy! I thought that was a good twist ending.