Week 9 Story: The Kind Tiger
One day after a long walk in the Kiju Forest, Tiger, Anansi, and Tacoomah, rested in a clearing in the forest and made up a dance. Tiger was the main dancer, Anansi specialized as the drummer with all his legs, and Tacoomah was the saxophone player.
They continued their travels, and they came upon a small town of all species of animals. The town was in the thick of the forest, with trees as tall and thick as skyscrapers. All of the people wore shirts, but one large furry grizzly bear had a blue shirt on while all the others were white.
Apparently, this grizzly bear was the leader of the town, and he was a compassionate and honorable leader to them.
Late one evening, Tiger, Anansi, and Tacoomah performed their elaborate dance to the town. Tiger amazed the crowd with his acrobatic moves, Anansi created an infectious beat to which everyone danced too, and Tacoomah energized the crowd with lively melodies.
After a while, the town became weary and sleep fell upon the town. Anansi was envious of the blue shirt, so he took the opportunity to steal it from the bear.
Anansi fled.
"Bear, I have been taken!" The shirt bellowed.
Startled, "good heavens, you are a talking shirt." says Anansi.
The grizzly bear woke up after he heard the shirt cry out. "Follow me! We must take back what has been stolen from us!" as the bear rallied the town with him.
Anansi attempted to climb one of the large trees, but as he started to make progress, he stumbled and dropped the shirt. The blue shirt flowed down from the great tree and landed on a goat.
"Bear, I have returned to the ground! Find me now you must!" the shirt cried out.
Goat had quickly buried himself into the ground, but one of his horns poked out slightly.
As the town roared by, the bear stepped on the horn and shrieked out in pain.
Out of his anger, the bear tore through the ground and pulled out the goat. The bear stripped him of the blue shirt, and the town wet the goat with all kinds of filth.
After Goat had already had a hard day, he was humiliated and considered isolating himself from the world so that nobody would have to smell his stench.
Tiger having secretly observed everything that went down felt empathy for the goat. She hopped down from her tree and cleaned Goat.
"Admire yourself now, for you have been cleaned. Go now, in peace, in freedom, and in confidence. No longer do you need to feel ashamed and embarrassed." said Tiger encouragingly.
"But still my beard do smell Tiger. You have done me a great service, but I am still afraid. Can you not clean my beard?" said Goat.
Tiger replied with compassion, "I cannot. Your beard is too thick and the filth too strong. But fear no more, for everything in this world is imperfect. But everything has the opportunity to act as if it is."
Author's Note
This story The Kind Tiger is inspired by Long-Shirt by Martha Warren Beckwith (1924). Long-Shirt is a story about Anansi, Tacoomah, and Tiger creating a dance and then traveling to a country where they invite all the people to the dance. The country is naked except for the one talking shirt. Similary, everyone falls asleep and Anansi steals the shirt from the head-man with one wooden leg. The rest of the story is about the head-man and the country trying to get the shirt back. When they find the goat and dig him up, they wet him with dirty slops, and the goat forgets to clean his beard and that is why goats have an offensive smell.
In my story, I mostly change the style of writing from Jamaican to English. I attempt to retain some of their style here and there. I add more descriptive words about the forest, the dance, and the characters. The head-man is changed to a grizzly bear. I make the shirt blue to represent the type of leader the bear is, and to symbolize how Tiger treats Goat at the end of the story. In the original, Tiger plays a very small role so I elevate the character to a main role. I wanted the story to have a positive encouraging ending, but still communicate the origin of why goats smell bad. Therefore, I added the dialogue between Goat and Tiger and slightly change the smell origin to make the ending more positive.
Bibliography
Long-Shirt by Martha Warren Beckwith (1924)
Image Information: Tiger via Pixabay
Hey, Justin. These stories are crazy and all over the place sometimes, aren't they? I think you did a good job at adapting a ridiculous concept even though I was confused at times. Your note put things in their place. Sometimes I think about putting the author's note at the start of the story, but I don't want to spoil things.
ReplyDeleteHi there!
ReplyDeleteI think this story is so fascinating, and I love how you tried to keep a lot of the Jamaican writing style. It is really entertaining! There are a few grammatical things that a read through will fix in two seconds, like "Startled, "good heavens, you are a talking shirt." says Anansi." This sentence I had to read a few times to realize that it was all about Anasi. Maybe say, "says Anansi, startled." Great job!