Week 4 Essay: Twenty-Two Goblins

This week, I read the Twenty-Two Goblins unit in the Un-Textbook. Overall, I thought the premise was very interesting-this unit is a frame tale in which a quest is introduced: a monk requests that a brave king retrieve a corpse from a sissoo tree. The original text was translated from Sanskrit and is part of a collection of Indian lore. I didn't know much about the culture before I read this unit, so it was intriguing to see how the culture influenced the text. Traditionally, goblins are fairly morbid: they inhabit corpses and if loved ones want to retrieve the bodies, they will have to answer a series of riddles that the goblin proposes until he gets tired. The "story within a story" theme runs throughout; the each new chapter is another riddle.

What I really appreciated about this unit was the background given before each riddle. For example, I had heard of the caste system in India before, but I did not know what the different levels were. Before the second riddle (Brave, Wise, and Clever), the introduction given was beneficial in helping me understand the members of the Brahman caste and how they fit into the society. I also was not familiar with the epic Ramayana, so the explanation of the characters was enlightening as well.

This was another thing I enjoyed about this unit: the allusions to other texts -- even unrelated ones such as the Bible -- brought a broader worldview and made me think about both Eastern and Western influences. For example, the introduction to the story The General's Wife prompted the reader to compare the actions of the king and their outcome to those of King David with Bathsheba and their fate in the Bible. This was certainly a fascinating thing to think about: though the kings acted in completely different manners, the two stories told the same moral. Without this thought experiment, I never would have made those connections.

Overall, I loved reading the riddles and trying to solve them. The goblin does a good job of being tricky, but the king is wise and intelligent, and I enjoyed reading his banter and his calm, logical way of explaining each answer.