Have you read Edgar Allan Poe's Short Story The 1002 Tale of Scheherazade?

[SilentMute]

I'm doing summaries for Edgar Allan Poe's short stories. I just finished this one. My main impression is that this is a story written by a man who wanted to prove that women just don't know when to shut up.

Is anyone familiar with the actual myth of Scheherazade? I looked it up. I always thought she died at the end. Wiki says she manages to win the respect of the king and get her life spared, and that by then she had also given him three sons.

[JCamilo]

Well, the idea is that Scherazade manages to "heal" the mad Sharyar at the end, telling stories. Poe just imagines the "healing" was not so effective. Sharyar was pretty much a serial killer in the story, a monster and she risks her life everyday to save the kingdom from such monster.

She does not die, the idea of 1001 Nights (which are a notable story by itself) is the idea of continuity, never ending.

[E.A Rumfield]

You read all his stories and that was all you got from them?

[Summer M]

My main impression is that this is a story written by a man who wanted to prove that women just don't know when to shut up.


Oh, goodness. That's what you took from that story? Perhaps you should read an annotated version, because this story is filled to the brim with scientific and science fictional anecdotes and references. It is one of Poe's most scientific stories.

[SilentMute]

I didn't read ALL the stories yet. I just happened to finish this particular one. I've read the others, and I find most interesting. I'm satisfied with what I got out of them. In this case, I was actually interested in the Scheherazade myth.

However, I perhaps mislead you all in what I was thinking. I was actually joking with my first interpretation, and sorry if anyone got offended or at least thought I was suggesting Poe was a woman-hater.

My version did mention all the anecdotes, it is just that it didn't quite impress me as much as the baseline plot. Scheherazade escapes death. She tells one more story. Unlike all the other ones, the husband is less impressed with this one--and in fact is so annoyed by it, he orders her executed come morning.

Maybe I'm just a crime buff and so that sticks out more to me than the reference to the petrified forest in Texas, the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and everything else that apparently impresses other people.

[cafolini]

The intention of the story is to establish love and hope. So she cannot die (in the story). However, to love a man like that can only be done with hate and resentment. It's what Nietzsche is thinking when he claims that Christianity is deeply nested in resentment. The man is a serial killer. To love him can only result in executing him; put him out of his misery, which, whether is openly said or not, is fully demostrated by the story.

[SilentMute]

To reiterate, I was over-simplifying in a joking way what I initially said. I don't think Poe is a woman-hater, and I'm sorry if anyone got offended. I was actually more interested in what other people have heard about the Scheherazade myth. This alternate ending, for instance...was this purely Poe's creation? In the story, the narrator refers to reading an obscure book that has this tale. I don't know whether Poe was actually referring to a real book or not.

Poe did write about monsters, though. Sometimes he is so convincing I have wondered if he wasn't putting down his own thoughts. The most disturbing story I have read so far, I think, is The Black Cat. It turned my stomach so much that I had to put off writing the summaries for a while. Fortunately, the next story I read was The Domain of the Arnheim. While the landscape gardening stories tend to bore me, it was a nice change from the gruesome stories. I think my favorite stories, though, are the Dupin stories...though I think Arthur Conan Doyle was a little better at taking observations and making logical conclusions from them. It was interesting to see that Poe was very broad in his writing--he wasn't just a horror writer. And I have noticed that he did seem to have an interest in science.

[JCamilo]

No, Scherazade does not die. What Poe do is a bit of irony. He is also working with the skepticism: this time the sultan does not fall for Scherazade storytelling, Suspension of Disbelief does not work.

Poe puts in Sharyar mind a more XIX mind, less prone to the ultra fantasy and odd oral edition of Sherazade. He is like the kid asking "wolf does not talk" while hearing the fables. Despite the admiration the XVIII century had for the nights, it was still exotic, fantasy, children play. This goes for Poe realism (he liked to consider himself scientific mind). With the refusal of the sultan to continue the nights, the XIX century transformation of fantasy in faery stories is done.

[cacian]

I remember this story from when I was a kid.
Thank you for bringing it up.
Actually the name Shehrazade is arabic for a 'month is born which propably trying to say that time is eternal.
Something like 'birthday' and Sherazade is 'birthmonth' meaning it happens every month.

[SilentMute]

Well, I just realized why I always did badly in literature classes. I didn't fail actually. I just exasperated everyone. When it comes to literature, I'm a bit of a caveman. I don't know why really. I generally am an intelligent person and capable of being philosophical in my own way. I'm even artistic in my own way.

Still, I guess there are some things that I just can't appreciate. Though I liked this story as far as the basic plot that I focused on, I actually admit I got rather aggravated by all the anecdotes. I was hoping Scheherazade would be telling a full story. Sinbad goes to an island made of ice cream. He encounters animal cracker cannibals. The creature with the horn is mistaken for one of them and forced to marry the chief's ugly daughter. Sinbad rescues his friend by dissolving the animal crackers in hot chocolate. Something like that.

But instead it was, "Then they went here, and this is a brief description of what they found. Then they went to this place, and this is what they saw."

But thanks for everyone replying. It gave me a little more depth to view Poe with, and on second thought, I guess the anecdotes were interesting if I had focused more on what they were referring to. Perhaps I should one day ask what the appeal of Jane Austen is.