The most interesting topics from the first half of the Arabian Nights unit were perspective and characterization. Each person telling a story had a reason to tell it. It was never just for fun. The main story started because Scheherazade was trying to save the other girls in the community. Several other stories involved this same motive. A group of traveling men took turns tellings stories to a genie who wanted to kill an innocent man. One story was told in order to teach a lesson of trust. The reason the story is being told sets the stage for the mood of the tale. Life saving situations led to stories that had nothing to do with the current situation. They were meant to be a distraction for the bad guy in order to turn his attention away from killing someone. If the need for a story involved teaching a lesson, on the other hand, the theme of the story very much involved the current situation. The characters were very hard to keep straight. Reading this unit was like watching an episode of The Days of Our Lives without having witnessed the first few decades of character establishment. The reader definitely had to keep up with the different stories and people involved with them.
The last half of this unit was the story of Aladdin. It was ironic to me that he was the hero of the story but didn't deserve to be considered as such. He was lazy at the beginning of the story and was lazy at the end. The only thing that made him successful was a little bit of luck. He was given a genie that did all of the work for him. I am still a little confused on what the moral of this story is. Maybe it's that anyone's dreams can come true. Aladdin was in a hopeless situation, but he ended up royalty. I think the author should have made him work a little harder to get to where he ended up.
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