Reading Notes: Twenty-Two Goblins


This week I chose to Twenty-Two Goblins because the overview captured my interest mentioning a goblin that tells riddles. I thought it would be a fun read and indeed it was. I have to say the story is quite odd overall and I would like to know how certain things came about. Such as, choosing fruit to be the carrier of gems, or why the goblin resides in a corpse (creepy!). I'm not familiar with Indian folklore, much less so than Greek mythology. One thing I noticed that I'd like to look into were the names of the characters. They would sometimes be named after objects or just something you wouldn't expect a name to be. Like, "Crescent", "Five-cloth", "Moonlight", etc. I wonder if they have any specific meaning, because within the story it doesn't seem so. 

The recurring theme in the goblin's riddles are "who is the most or best-suited type of person" for whatever. A lot of the riddles were centered around which man deserved the woman the most. Initially I was taken aback thinking "how could there be a right answer?" because it seemed very subjective. But then again, if this was dated back a time ago, the king did indeed have very logical answers. I find humor in the goblin returning back to the tree every time the king answers the riddle correctly. It's like the goblin has an interest in the king and is having so much fun with telling riddles to him that he wants to play again and again. You would think he would reward the king by letting him go on his way after answering correctly. But if he knows the answer and doesn't say so, his head will explode. I wonder how the king will end this cycle. It's also interesting to note that the king seems all very level-headed about the circumstance. As in, he doesn't get frustrated with the goblin whenever he relentlessly returns to the tree. He simply treks back and does it all over again without question. I'm yet unclear what the message of the story is, so I'll be sure to read the next part to see how it turns out. 

Twenty-Two Goblins
Translated by Arthur W. Ryder

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