Reading Notes: Sindbad, Part A

Cyclops from the voyages of Sindbad. Found on wikipedia.

Hey everyone! This week I read the first part of the The Voyages of Sindbad. These were a collection of tales of the adventures of the sailor and merchant Sindbad. I had heard of this tale when I was younger but never had the chance to read it and experience it like a lot of other fairy tales/myths. For this post I will look at a few of the most interesting points in the plot and attempt to identify any common themes.

Common Themes
- in each of the four stories that I read, every king that Sindbad encounters automatically accepts him into his good graces and gives him anything he needs
- Sindbad always makes a fortune off of his misadventures before he returns to Baghdad
-Sinbad always gives a good portion of his money to the poor when he returns home
-Sindbad always recovers the goods he lost from the ship after the ship has left him or crashed
-Each story starts out relatively realistic then gets progressively more absurd
-Every time Sindbad returns from an adventure with excess wealth and goods, it is not long before he grows bored of it and goes back out for more

Plot
First Voyage
-Sindbad lands on what they thought was a large island when it is actually a huge whale. This may be a good plot twist to include in a future story. Have a character arrive somewhere they think is familiar then reveal some big illusion that was hiding the true nature of the area.

Second Voyage
-During the second voyage Sindbad paints a beautiful picture of his surroundings. He talks about how he finds himself in a field of diamonds. This stuck out as a reminder to me to try not to be lazy with my description of a setting in my stories because they can have a big impact on the reader's visualization and interest with the story.

Third Voyage
-This tale introduces a confrontation between the main character, Sindbad, and a cyclops who slowly eats all the members of his crew before they escape. Providing a nemesis for your main character can open up many different pathways your story can walk down. It may be a good idea to include a more active nemesis in future stories.


Bibliography
Myth-Folklore Unit: The Voyages of Sindbad
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang