Journal Topics May 29

Journal Topic:

Think of a favorite story that someone told you when you were a child or adolescent. Was this a story that you asked your parents or relatives to tell you repeatedly? Please write about why this story is special to you and why you cherish the story so much. Try to describe how the narrator told the story and how it made you feel. Also, please try to include a brief summary of the story itself.


Journal:

Although it is not a story that my parents told me repeatedly, this was one of my favorites that I read in the textbook in the elementary school: Gon, the Little Fox. I didn’t understand why I liked this story so much during adolescence, but I found the reasons for which I recall the story well, being an adult.

Gon is a little fox, which likes to trick on people. He often steals foods from villagers, and gets them angry for many times. One day, he finds one of the villagers Hyoju trying to catch an eel in a river. Gon steals an eel from Hyoju, when Hyoju almost catches it with his hands. Hyoju wants to get for his mother, because she is very sick. A couple of days later, the fox feels the sense of guilty knowing that Hyoju’s mother is died. Since then Gon continues to secretly leave mushrooms and chestnuts in Hyoju’s house. One day, Hyoju sees the little fox sneaking around his house, and he shot the fox with a gun. Afterwards Hyoju finds that the fox was not a thief but just trying to leave the mushrooms and chestnuts in his house.

I learned a lot of lessons from this story. First, to be trusted by others, it is important to always behave well. It is not easy to be trustful if one behaved badly in the past. In the story, Gon was pretty naughty and steals a lot of foods from villagers. This made it difficult for villagers, including Hyoju, to believe that the little fox actually left the gift in Hyoju’s house. Therefore, one should usually be nice and kind to others if he/she wants to be trusted by others. Otherwise one cannot prove his achievement to others when he/she really wants to be understood by others.

The second lesson that I learned from this story is the impact of misperception in social interaction. Even if people have good intentions, a tragic event could happen between the actors. In the story, neither Gon nor Hyoju has a bad intention, and they are not liable for the accident. Gon just wanted to make Hyoju feel happy with the foods that he collected in forests: Hyoju just protect, with the gun, his house and foods from the “naughty” fox. Even though both Gon and Hyoju have defensive purpose, the result was a tragedy due to the misperception to each other.

Misperception differentiates a result of social interaction from other possible consequences. For example, wars sometimes occur not because a country wants to attack their adversary but because of the misperception shaped through the interaction between states which try to defend themselves from a possible aggression by others, as First World War showcased. In this sense the fairy story developed my interest and curiosity to the question of why a tragedy happens, and as a result I took political science as a major in the graduate school, in order to answer to the question.

Third, I cherish my sympathy to animals through reading this story. Compare with the human strength and violence, animals are weak. Human can kill any animal with devices they developed if they want. Once he decides to remove a living nature, it takes no time to achieve it. We can kill a living creature; however, we cannot revive it. Therefore, before judging if we should eliminate a natural life, we should take time to carefully think about the reasons and the consequences.

Fairy tales give us many insights to see the world and ourselves. I remember that I sobbed after reading this story when I was a child because the ending was too tragic for the junior student to accept the "reality." However, I learned a lot of lessons from this sad story, which I hope make my life happy. I hope that I read this story for my child when I become a parent.