This weeks stories have been a challenge to read. Diving deeper into the stories I decided to do some research to find out the origin. Turns out that these stories surfaced during the time of slavery. The
Brer Rabbit stories were meant to symbolize the underdog in the situation. I found this to be a really intriguing fact. Understanding the history behind these stories brings out the powerful message that is hidden within them. The rabbit is meant to be a trickster but not a normal trickster. The type of trickster that the rabbit is can be explained as not using any type of power or size to defeat his enemy but rather his mind and silver tongue. This is what makes writing the story interesting and why I have chosen to plan this week rather than write. I think that I will be making my own version of the story "How Mr. Rabbit was too Sharp for Mr. Fox" which is a story about how the rabbit has to outsmart the fox in order to survive and not be the fox's next meal. My idea is to keep that main idea but make it into a story more modern in nature. Maybe doing a story about surviving in todays world with the people around us. Or possibly doing a modern rabbit and fox. The story will be interesting to write and will take me a little bit longer to write than usual so I will make sure to plan ahead for that. The nature of the text is really difficult for me to read but I have read the story at least six times now and am starting to understand more of what it is about.
This Fox represents the greedy/hungry fox that is trying to eat the rabbit
Bibliography: "Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings" from
Brer Rabbit by Joel Chandler Harris
"The History of Brer Rabbit" from
Wikipedia by Multiple sources
I am glad you read those stories, Justin! The idea with the planning post is to do some research also, and I wasn't quite sure what research questions fit with what you wrote about here but you might enjoy learning about Brer Rabbit, or about AAVE, African-American Vernacular English, or about tricksters in general. Those links are to Wikipedia, which has good background on all of those topics. So, before you write your story next week, make sure to do the research part of the planning also. The idea is that you can get story ideas and find creative details not just from the original story and from your own imagination but also by doing research. :-)
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