Essay: Russian Death

The Russian Folktales unit dealt a lot with death. The later stories focused on ghosts and how exactly the living interact with the dead. It was interesting that none of the ghosts were nice. One of the dead characters even went out and killed people for fun. The stories described how to get rid of ghosts and how to handle them if a situation got out of hand. When I was reading through these stories, I got the impression that these tales were meant to be a guidebook. They described what situations to not get yourself into, but if you do end up in a predicament, here's what you're supposed to do.

I really enjoyed this unit because the stories are all unique. Most stories I've read lately from other units have been about trickery and how to deceive your foe. This unit had a variety of different supernatural characters, and each had an interesting reason to be included in the story. One of favorites was The Treasure. The bad guy definitely got what he deserved by having the goat's skin permanently attached to his body. This was intriguing because how he ended up like this was a mystery. The story never described exactly why the skin could never be removed. It was just the universe making sure karma was in play.

Emilian the Fool was also a good one. It reminded me of Aladin. Emilian got to make wishes by the power of a fish, while Aladin was granted his wishes by the genie. This story was unique within this unit because of how much it lacked negativity. The other stories focused on death mainly. Emilian the Fool was all about the easy way out in the end. He got everything he wished for just by being lazy and wishing for things. It doesn't seem very Russian to me, but I guess they had to have happy-go-lucky stories too.

Cemetery. Pixabay.