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

A Th ousand and One Nights 213
top of a serpent-and-diamond-laden mountain, and then daringly
hides in a Rukh nest disguised under a carcass, a merchant familiar
with the land exclaims: “none ever reached yonder valley and came
off thence alive before thee” (Burton 404). Th is becomes a mantra
repeated from episode to episode: Sindbad survives where others die.
Although Sindbad attributes his survival in every instance to Allah,
it is clear in the narrative that the reason Sindbad prevails is because
he is extraordinarily clever.
In episodes reminiscent of Th e Odyssey, Sindbad demonstrates
that one of the ingredients of his cleverness is his memory: He
remembers the stories he has been told by all the people he has met
on his travels. When he sees a “huge white dome rising high in air
and of vast compass,” he remembers “a story I had heard aforetime of
pilgrims and travelers, how in a certain island dwelleth a huge bird,
called the ‘Rukh’” (400). Th is retained piece of information saves his
life. By comparison, in the Fifth Voyage, the crew of his ship does not
recognize a similar egg for what it is, and the men ignore his advice
not to touch it: “Th ey paid no heed to me and gave not over smiting
upon the egg” (433). Th e Rukh parents destroy the vessel and only
Sindbad survives by catching the plank of the ship and washing up
on an island. Many times Sindbad’s wit and improvisatory brilliance
save his life and the lives of others. During his Th ird Voyage, when
a group of survivors seek shelter in the house of a Polyphemus-like
giant, Sindbad’s suggestion that they “carry some of this fi rewood
and planks down to the sea shore and make us a boat wherein, if
we succeed in slaughtering him, we may embark” temporarily saves
them all (410). Later in the same episode, Sindbad constructs a box
from pieces of wood that enclosed him “like a bier,” protecting him
from being eaten by a huge serpent that devours the last two of his
companions (413).
At the beginning of his Fourth Voyage, Sindbad evinces another
sort of cleverness when he refuses to eat the food fed to him and his
companions by a tribe of cannibals, victuals that “no sooner had [his]
comrades tasted . . . than their reason fl ed and their condition changed
and they began to devour it like madmen possessed of an evil spirit”
(420). While his comrades are fattened and pastured like cattle, he
“wasted away and became sickly for fear and hunger and [his] fl esh
shriveled on [his] bones” (421). Finding his body undesirable, the
savages allow Sindbad to fl ee. Once again, only Sindbad survives.