Reading Notes - Twenty Two Goblins (Reading A)

I chose Twenty Two Goblins for this week's reading. I thought it would be interesting to read something with riddles, because I've never been any good at them. The thing about this unit is the King's answers all seem justified, but for some, you could reasonably justify any answer. For others, it's obvious that there is only one choice. 

For example, the very first story, where in three brothers are all in love with the same woman. She passes away and each of them has a role to play in bringing her back to life. The goblin asks the King which of the brothers deserves her, and he chooses the brother who laid around in the girl's ashes (gross) over the brother who took her bones to the Ganges River (double gross) and the brother who went off and learned a magic spell to bring her to life. I think that you could make a case for the magic brother, but I guess the one who rolled around ini her ashes was the right answer, since the goblin didn't kill him. 

But for the story about the three delicate wives, where in three wives are wounded by things that definitely shouldn't wound them, the answer is more obvious. The first wife is hurt by a falling lotus petal, the second is burned by a moonbeam, and the third is bruised by the sound of a mortar and pestle. The goblin asks which wife is the most delicate and the King chooses the third wife. Which seems obvious to me since she was hurt by a sound, and not by anything actually touching her. 

The other thing that I noticed about these stories is how transparent the names are. Even in the introduction, the monk who sends the king out to retrieve this goblin is names Patience. He had been sending the king jewels for twelve years to try to get him to go out and get this goblin (which is hidden inside of a corpse, gross); then, every time the King correctly answers a riddle, the body vanishes and the King has to go back and get it. So this monk has not only been waiting 12 years for the king to even go on the quest, now he's waiting even longer for the king to complete the quest. And the King's name is Victory, which I suppose explains why he keeps surviving the goblin's riddles. All the names in the riddles are transparent as well. A warrior named Brave, or a King named Heroic, a beautiful girl named Lovely, a launderer named Clean-cloth. 

I think that two of these elements would be interesting to try to incorporate into an original story. First, only after reading these stories do I see nothing wrong with shamelessly naming characters after the values they are meant to incapsulate. And second, the casual nature of death and bodies adds an element of horror without horror being the focus of the story. I like that.

"Twenty Two Goblins" by Perham W. Nahl
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