Week 11 Essay: Twenty-Two Goblins Overview

Essay: Twenty-Two Goblins

          This week, I explored the Un-Textbook Stories of Twenty-Two Goblins translated from the Sanskrit version by Arthur Ryder. These stories began with an introduction of King Triple-Victory, the indirect focus of the stories.

          In this introduction, King Triple-Victory received fruit every day from a Monk. The King did not want the fruit and would give them to his Treasurer. His Treasurer also finding no use for the fruit would throw them out of the window. King Triple-Victory gave the fruit to his monkey who decided to open the fruit one day to find a gem in it. Shocked, King Triple-Victory went and asked the Treasurer if all of the other fruit had gems in them as well and soon realized that there were heaps of gems. The Monk returns the next day and King Triple-Victory asks him why he gives him such a nice gift each day. The Monk leads him to a tree which contains a goblin, beginning the series of stories.

          Throughout each story, there is a weird paradox of morality that King Triple- Victory must answer to the satisfaction of the Goblin. Each story is a different strange situation that seemingly has no real answer. However, King Triple-Victory manages to answer to the goblin’s satisfaction leading to another story each day.

          These stories were quite strange to read but so entertaining. Each story was a strange series of events that did seem to go together. The introduction of the story was hardly a preparation for the first series of events, which was different from the next set- each sentence was something a little… wonky, could I say? The goblin also asked equally as strange morality questions that King Triple-Victory always instantly knew the answer to. It was as if the stories King Triple-Victory were hearing were not the same stories I was interpreting which made it even more interesting to me; everything came together as an incredibly interesting story.

          Each story was something of a “Food For Thought” that made me pause in my busy day and think about what this story was truly about and what the point and lesson of the story was. While I still don’t know for some of these stories, I really appreciate the process of “Read and Think” that Twenty- Two Goblins led me to do.

Image of a Book Cover of
Twenty- Two Goblins by Arthur Ryder
Provided by Tumbler

Links: 

         Twenty-Two Goblins

          Introduction 

         And also because I thought it was a strange word to choose in this          mythical setting: Goblin