Reading Notes: More Jataka Tales, Part A

I decided for this reading assignment to try focusing on three attributes for several of the characters in the Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt. I also decided to not focus on the same three attributes for each story, but to add some variability because I thought that it would make the assignment a little too difficult. For instance, it's not easy to determine the greatest fear from each of the stories, especially if fear is not involved at all in the plot. Here are my two favorite Jataka Tales:


The Monkey and the Crocodile by Ellen C. Babbitt

Monkey:

1. Greatest weakness: I think the monkey's greatest weakness is his desire for food. So much so, that he finds himself in a couple of pickles with a crocodile who is trying to obtain his heart.
2. Greatest strength: I think the monkey's greatest strength is his cunning and cleverness. He's able to fool the crocodile several times in order to escape certain doom. Arguably though they're not particularly clever ploys, yet they work nonetheless and it is because of his cleverness that he escapes death.
3.  Miscellaneous attribute: The monkey has great agility, able to leap from rock to rock across rivers and even climb trees with seemingly great ease.

Crocodile:

1. Greatest weakness: The crocodile seems to not be very bright so I would judge his greatest weakness to be stupidity. It is because he is as thick as an oak tree that the monkey is able to fool him so easily with such simple ploys (or what I would call simple ploys).
2. Greatest strength: I believe the crocodile's greatest strength to be his physical strength. While not particularly bright, he has strong jaws for clamping on the monkey and can carry the monkey with ease. He even drags the monkey under the water in an attempt to drown him.
3. Miscellaneous attribute: The crocodile is persistent and patient. He spends all day and well into the night watching the monkey, waiting patiently for his chance to get the monkey's heart.

The Turtle Who Couldn't Stop Talking by Ellen C. Babbitt

Turtle:

1. Greatest weakness: The turtle's greatest weakness is his denseness. He didn't realize the obvious - that if you talk while you're hanging on to a stick with your mouth alone that you would plummet to your death.
2. Greatest strength: The turtle's greatest strength is, in my opinion, his jaw strength. It's remarkable that he could hang on to a stick in the air with his jaw alone, let alone for however long it would take for the geese to take him to the lake.
3. Miscellaneous attribute: The turtle may have been sensitive. Why else would he respond to the children's silly taunts?

Geese:

1. Greatest weakness: I could see this being a strength too, but I believe the Geese' greatest weakness to be their apathy. The Jataka tale states they became great friends with the turtle, yet when the turtle plummeted to his death they seemed to have clearly not been affected by it in any way.
2. Greatest strength: I think the Geese' greatest strength is their ingenuity. Who would've thought two geese would have the intelligence to devise a way to carry a turtle to the "promised land" (their home far away) by using a stick between them.
3. Miscellaneous attribute: Wisdom, perhaps. They told the turtle to not speak, lest he falls to his death, so they either foresaw that such an accident was plausible, or they simply wanted the turtle to shut up. 

A photo of a turtle and a crocodile - an amalgamation of these two Jataka Tales. Souece: Wikimedia