Blooms Literary Themes - THE TRICKSTER.pdf - ymerleksi - home

A Th ousand and One Nights 211
ways in which fortune seems adverse to him (he appears unlucky), and
yet by dint of cleverness, improvisatory élan, and outright trickery, he
outwits fate. As Sindbad explains, “I deserve my riches since I suff ered
and survived.” Of course that begs the question as to whether his ultimate
or true fate was indeed to outwit the outward manifestations of
a false fate (all those shipwrecks!), giving credence to the refl ections of
the Landsman. We will discuss this a bit later. Suffi ce it to note here
that Sindbad the Seaman wishes to convince Sindbad the Landsman of
something. His retelling is a response to the landsman’s perception of a
wheel of fortune guided by predestination; through his storytelling, the
Seaman argues for a form of free will, the only possible de facto philosophical
position for a trickster, a man who lives by his wits.
Complicating the mirror eff ect of the overall story-within-a-story
structure, Sindbad tells how he recounted elements of his story to
the people he met on his travels. Sindbad’s performances are often
selective retellings of his journey, stories designed to help him obtain
what he wants. Such rhetorical skill attests to this trickster’s ability to
manipulate people and exploit their inherent fascination with stories.
At the end of the Fourth Voyage, for example, after being rescued by
a ship, Sindbad tells the captain only the fi rst part of his adventure
on the island, “but acquainted him with nothing of that which had
befallen [him] in the city and the cavern, lest there should be any of
the islandry in the ship” (430). What Sindbad wants, of course, after
each of his seven shipwrecks, is to survive. He wants food, shelter, and
the means to return to Baghdad.
TRAVELING AND ETHNOLOGY
A trickster is always “on the road” (or, for our purposes, “on the
sea”); he is an inveterate traveler who cannot stay put. Seven times
Sindbad describes his blissful existence in Baghdad in similar terms:
“I was living a most enjoyable life” (398); “[I lived] in utmost ease and
prosperity and comfort and happiness” (407). And seven times this
comfortable delight is interrupted by his yearning for the open sea,
for the possibility of “traveling about the world of men and seeing
their cities and islands” (398). Sindbad’s appetites drive his wanderings.
His greatest pleasure is to discover “strange countries” (418)
where “strange folk dwell” (443). Seven times he leaves his home to
seek adventure.