by threekho
Few days ago I saw my 2 kohai (both are freshmen) doing japanese homework making a tale from their origin country. Both are Indonesian, and even they were doing it not in the same day, they have similar topic to talk about. The girl one (my beloved girlfriend,fyi) chose to talk about “si Kuya dan si Lutung”, and the boy wanted to tell about “Kancil dan Monyet”.
Basically “si Kuya dan si Lutung” story tells us about how bad Lutung (quite like a monkey and in this story it is white) manner is. It started when Kuya (a turtle) felt thirsty so bad in a heated blazing day,then he saw lots of coconut on the top of coconut tree (where else it would be?). He tried many things to get the coconut and drink it. Nevertheless, he never reached it. Once, he felt extremely exhausted trying to get the coconut but only failed.
At that time, White Lutung came (what a coincidence there) and asked Kuya what was he doing until he got exhausted badly, then Kuya told Lutung that he greatly wanted to drink the coconut to fulfill his thirsty. Fortunately, Lutung kindly offered to climb the tree and take coconut for Kuya. For sure, Kuya accepted the offer without thinking further. After waiting several times, Lutung never went down the tree. Kuya was curious with what happenned up there. Kuya saw to the top of the tree and shocked when he saw Lutung drank almost all of the coconuts on the top of the tree. There was only one or two coconuts left. Being mad by what Lutung did, Kuya shouted Lutung to give the leftover coconuts to him. Lutung felt disturbed and threw the coconut to Kuya hardly.
As the other fable story, Kuya made a quite harsh plan to revenge Lutung. He collected all the burnable wood and other material he could get then put it round the coconut tree. Kuya burnt all the things and let the smoke spread quicly. On the top, Lutung breath hardly and the smoke made its skin black. Since then, Lutung seldomly get down from trees to avoid meet Kuya.
Almost the same plot with “si Kuya dan si Lutung”, “Kancil dan Monyet” has similar way of story. It tells about the revenge of Kancil (muskdeer) after being cheated by Monyet (monkey).
Suddenly i thougt about the fable things. For sure, every story telling everywhere has what it called protagonist and antagonist. We can not call story a story when it doesnt have one of those two parts. However, fable is kind of story which is told mostly to children. Basically, children, i assume between 5-12, are really easy to believe what they hear and see from adult. They will believe a story being told by their parents is really true happened in the real world.
In this case, i am concerning about the monkey image for children.I think children will think that monkey is quite a tricky animal rather than a cute scattered animal. It happened to me. Believe it or not, Aladdin movie had influenced on me to be scared with snake. Jaffar (if i remember it correctly) is the number one Aladdin enemy, and he was symbolized by snake. When i finished watching Aladdin I rememeber that i couldnt sleep thinking about Jaffar at night. Snake is the must be killed animal for me. I have never been beaten by a snake, i seldomly see snake, but i hate it desperately even i scared when i see dead snake in front of me. It is kind of never happened trauma to me.
Back to the topic, do you think the similar thing will happen to a child when they are told a fable story from his or her parent?
By that matter, i believe that fable is not the best way to grow children interest in animals. Or maybe a fable should only contain protagonist in it. Do you agree?
