Twenty-Two Goblins: Reading Diary B

The Girl and the Thief from the UnTextbook

• “The Brahman who died because Poison from a Snake in the Claws of a Hawk fell into a Dish of Foodgiven him by a Charitable Woman. Who is to blame for his death?”  That took me a second to wrap my head around
• What is the significance of the “swami” ending to a name
• “Nothing is impossible to the brave and determined man”  This seems to be the moral of the larger story.
• It is interesting that this story doesn’t revolve around getting a girl like most of the others do, though it does involve losing a girl
• Why did the king pretend to be a thief and then just leave?  Seems awfully anticlimactic
• “ He showed more than human valour.”  That seems like a rather odd thing for a thief to show
• “But the more he scolded, the more determined she became”  Determination
• When Shiva grants Pearl the boon, she makes relatively selfless wishes
• “he immediately slipped from the king's shoulder and escaped to his home. But the king was not discouraged” Persistent, isn’t he?
• Giving away your wife like that is rather creepy.  At least the king seems to understand that
• “No great man stops in the middle of the hardest undertaking.”
• All of the stories have multiple people that come together somehow.  Might be significant
• It seems like the stories are all interconnected.  I’m pretty sure that some of the names of people and places are repeated
• At first, it seemed like the magician was going to bring the boy back to life and be a hero.  Instead he basically stole his body and his old life
• “The king paid no attention to the terrible witch of night, clad in black darkness” where did the witch come from?
• Hmm.  It’s a tad odd that there are character’s whose names have the word lion in them considering the fact that every mention of lions up to this point has been negative
• So the goblin was actually helping the king?  Nice plot twist
• The king doesn’t seem too concerned about finding out the correct answer