Goodhall 1
Lamont Goodhall
English 1012
2/17/14
Essay #1
Throughout time, the peoples of the world all face some of the same questions. Things
like, how will we be remembered? What type of legacy will we leave behind? Or even what do
we want future generations to keep close to their heart? For most Caribbean families, wisdom is
the thing to be passed on; wisdom in the form of life lessons, stories and parables. Armed with
this wisdom, they expect you to go into the world and be one step ahead. When you approach
your golden years, it is then your turn to pass the lessons forward.
With that said, these lessons from the Caribbean elders are not “clear as day” so to speak.
Trying to understand the messages in the stories and parables that they relay require deep
thought. Sometimes, it may take many years before you actually realize the usefulness of the
teachings that you have received. Besides just telling you something like “Young bird don’t
know hurricane”, meaning you are young and inexperienced, Anansi the Spider became an
additional and more effective tool to pass parables and lessons to young Caribbean children.
The professional trickster, Anansi the Spider becomes the center of folk stories in the
Caribbean islands due to the effects of the slave trade. It does not take long for the tales of
Anansi to be widely known. For this reason, the focus will go to two of the more popular
folktales. The first one of the two is called Anansi and the Yam Hills. In this folktale, Anansi the
Spider comes up with an idea to prey on as many of his fellow neighbors he could fool into
saying the number five. This trick is born from an earlier situation involving a witch who decides
to punish her village; the witch whose name was Five. Since she was a child, she resented her
Goodhall 2
name and resented the facts that the children of her town decided to make fun of it. They would
say things like “Give me five” and laugh and things like this made her grow bitter. To get back at
these people for making fun of her, Five decides to place the curse under the following
conditions: If you lived in her village and said the number “five” you would vanish into thin air!
Anansi is living on hard times and seizes the chance to manipulate the members of the
village and those who simply just want to pass through. He would ask his victim to count the
amount of yam hills that he planted in a field nearby. As soon as they began their count and
reached the five and disappear, Anansi would take whatever possessions they had; food they had
with them which he took for his own to eat. However, after meeting such success, Anansi would
meet his demise when he became too greedy. He was eventually outwitted by Ms. Guniea Fowl
who tricked him into saying five while counting; causing him to vanish and leave behind all of
