Reading Notes: Native American Marriage Tales Part A

Reading Notes

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(Native American Totem Poles by Getty Images)

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Splinter-Foot Girl (Part I)
      With this story, rather than focusing on the flow/plot of the story I tried to focus on the characters themselves. This required me to read the story twice but it lead to some really interesting thoughts and ideas about animal characters. Maybe I could anthropomorphize more of those animal characters to create a more dynamic story.

Splinter-Foot Girl (Part II)
     This was an interesting development to the Splinter-Foot Girl story because instead of losing the stepmother won this round. By building a contraption to fake a strange birthing, the stepmother was able to have the young wife killed. More and more her villainous tendencies are reminding me that of the salem witch trials; it could be an interesting mix or take on this "fairytale."

Splinter-Foot Girl (Final Part)
     I loved how with this part it focused on a different member of the family, the loved dog and his undying love for the young wife's abandoned children. I liked how this one reflect the first story and was set up more like a journey than a tale of one instance. Very fable like in its framework but also fairytale like in its verse.

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All reading notes are based off of stories from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929).