Comparing Two Folktales

Nicole
The two folktales "The Wise Old Woman" and "The Old Grandfather and his Little Grandson, are extremely similar with the same universal theme. They both give examples of how the elders in the folktales are mistreated. In the "Wise Old Woman" by Yoshiko Uchida, all of the elders are disrespected when the Lord creates a decree that all elders over the age of seventy-one must be banished into the woods to die. In "The Old Grandfather and his Little Grandson" by Leo Tolstoy, the grandpa is treated badly by his son and daughter-in-law. He is extremely old, deaf, blind, and has no teeth and when he drops his bowl his kids lash out at him. Both of these stories have the same universal theme which is to respect your elders. To start, in these …show more content…
The main characters in the two folktales are the grandparents who are not treated fairly. In both stories the elders are treated like garbage, as if they are useless in the world. For instance, in "The Old Grandpa and his Little Grandson" the grandpa is in need of lots of help and support from his family. Instead, the family neglects him and punishes him when he does something wrong. Similar to that folktale, in "The Wise Old Woman" the elders are disrespected and treated with absolutely no human dignity. The Lord says that elders are not useful, so once they reach a certain age, they have to go die in the woods. As we see in both of these folktales, the elders are treated with no …show more content…
The people who were mistreating them didn't all of a sudden decide to stop treating them poorly, there was a motivation. In "The Old Grandfather and his Little Grandson" the motivation for the parents to stop mistreating the grandpa was their son Misha. He made them realize that what goes around comes around, meaning that one day they will be the ones eating out of a wooden bowl in the corner. After that, they immediately felt guilty and started treating the grandpa right. The motivation in "The Wise Old Women" was when the elder mom saved the village from being conquered. That made the young Lord realize he had made a huge mistake to get rid of the old people in the village. The elderly have experienced so much, intern making them very wise and valuable. The two motivations in the stories helped the characters realize that all elders must be respected for the way they