Tales

First of all, what do we mean by “tales”? What will your mind think when you come across the word “tales”? I would say that tales mean stories, often involving magic, power or exciting events. When I come across “tales”, my mind will definitely think of Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio and so forth. Why would one think of those tales? The reasons are obvious. We used to listen to this kind of stories during our childhood. Each and every one of them is unique and interesting, with different kind of magic and powers. In order to enjoy tales, I personally think that the person must be creative in imagining the magical events and imaginary creatures.

However, tales are not limited to those children’s stories only. Recently, I have encountered many other kind of tales. Among them are Daedalus and Icarus, The Son of the Turtle-Spirit, Androcles, and many more. Perhaps for some of us, these tales are not something new for them. But as for myself, as far as I concern, this is my first time reading these tales. I notice that tales would not necessarily have to have magic or power. It can also be in a form of spirit, something to do with myths, legend and so on. Since “tales” is too general and broad to consider in all its aspects, I shall say that tales overall, are stories which are exciting and appealing, which often used to teach moral values.

Name: Noor Athirah Che Zakaria
Matric No. : 134191

Daedalus and Icarus

Have you ever come upon the story of Daedalus and Icarus? I have. Briefly, it is a tragic story of a father and a son who tried to escape from a land named Crete by using the father’s invention of mock wings. But, their effort to escape is to no avail. The son finally fell into the sea and died because he ignored his father’s advice. When I first read about the story, I found it quite confusing since it revolved around many characters, namely Minos, Daedalus, Icarus, the monstrous child, and Pallas. Furthermore, there were also the names of places such as Crete, Delos, Peros, Juno’s sacred isle of Samos, Lebinthus and Calymne. All of these characters and places names are quite confusing because I cannot differentiate whether they are the characters or places. These characters and places somehow did not really related to each other. The plot of the story seemed to be jumbled up. So I had to read the story again and again.

Then, I was asked to do a summary of the story. It really helped. Summary gave me a clearer view point of the story because I can only focus on the main idea of the story where the protagonist, Daedalus wanted to escape but the antagonist, Minos had blocked the way. Thus the problem leads to the whole story to happen. After doing the summary for about 200 words, I again, was asked to summarise the summary to make it simpler, shorter and comprehensible. Basically, reading the story teaches me to keep the promise and obey our parents’ advice. So, I rather say that this story really put across good moral values to the readers.

Name: Noor Athirah Che Zakaria
Matric No. : 134191