For some, choosing a favorite book or novel is like choosing one’s favorite child. Which one would you neglect for the benefit of the other? Thankfully for some, loving a novel comes with the perk of loving other similar novels with a receptive theme that rings high in the heart of the reader as a call that cannot be ignored. This theme is love, injustice, war, fear, the individual, or the community.
Ever since I was a young girl, I have been exposed to a diverse culture of mentors, teachers, and peers. Stories that have shaped my understandings of the world around me ranged from long fairytales to short and lesson teaching folktales. Over centuries, these folktales have been rooted in the oral tradition of storytelling, they have transformed from eon to eon while influencing man’s early understandings of the world.
I learned from this tale that fear is not always necessarily a bad thing because it pushes us and even drives us to understand things in life, like why I had nightmares or why fear was something we all experienced.
By simulating elements of man’s early society, folktales have channeled a flow of emotions, values, and mores that have been reflected by folklore in societies that have not necessarily had any contact with one another. This is why the story- no doubt my favorite from my Algerian teacher from Kabylia resonated in my mind and heart with such familiarity. It was not because I had heard the story before it was because I had heard the same values and teachings in stories that were told by my grandfather in his native language and translated to me by my father in French.
The Jackal and the Hen was a story of a feral, Jackal, that manipulated a terrified Hen. The jackal used fear to manipulate and attain what he wanted, her chicks, knowing that her fear allowed him control over her submissive state of mind. However, in the story, the tables turn, and the Jackal experiences the same fear he inflicted on his prey, this time the fear of death.
The main idea perpetuated in this tale- and in many others that I’ve heard throughout the course of my youth growing up in a very cultural driven society- was people’s fears can be weaknesses. Manipulating people with fear because of their social status and position to get what they want is something that is omnipresent in many societies and cultures. The use of animals as a metaphor to illustrate actual people in society and ultimately denounce that fear is a transcending archetype that is part of the human experience; it is a universal and primordial innate attribute embodied by humans and even animals. This story was first told to me when I feared I would never get over my nightmares as a young girl.
Fear that wasn’t my main concern, rather how to overcome it. I learned from this tale that fear is not always necessarily a bad thing because it pushes us and even drives us to understand things in life, like why I had nightmares or why fear was something we all experienced. It pushes us to the limits of our knowledge and sometimes even transcends those limits. However, it is also there to remind us not to make fools out of ourselves and let those who use fear for bad overpower us and take the upper hand, in certain situations where we find ourselves in a submissive state of mind.
Griot*: a member of a class of traveling poets, musicians, and storytellers who maintain a tradition of oral history in parts of West Africa.
“Griot.” Def.1. Dictionary.com. British Dictionary, 1979. Web. 2018.