David Viillard
April 22, 2015
Literature and Culture
Professor Henck
Essay Option #4
Someone once asked me” In life do you take the initiative to get your
success?? When I tried to answer the question I wrestled with the answer.
Because the reality is, sometimes I do and sometimes I do not. Sometimes I will
do whatever it takes to get my success and other times I will just give up. I will
just sit back and expect things are supposed to fall into place in my life. That is not
realistic at times. In society today most people have the same mind set as me. In
society you don’t see people taking initiative and getting things done. Society
could learn from the two literary stories. The Arabian Night and Lysistrata is an
example of where you see women recognizing what they want and taking the
initiative to get it. In this essay I will compare and contrast The Arabian Night and
Lysistrata.
In the story of the Arabian night there was a king by the name of
Shahrayar and his brother Shazaman who finds out that their wives are cheating on
them with a kitchen boy and the other with black servant men and women. The
men were very very angry and because of that they thought to go on an adventure
to let go some stem. Well while on that adventure they found this lady who had
slept with hundreds of men. This made the king really upset so he decided to go
back to his home from the adventure. When he got there he asked for a virgin to
marry and he wed her and slept with her. The next morning he killed her so she
would never have time to cheat on him. Well he did this over and over again, night
after night. Until one day Shehrazad asked her father to allow her to marry the
king. Her father wasn’t happy but he allowed her to marry him. The king married
Sherazad and the night of the wedding his wife asked him to allow her to read a
story to her little sister. The king agreed and she read a story to her little sister but
she wasn’t able to finish that night. So the king kept her alive so she could
complete the stories, and she did that every night. She tells stories and stop in the
middle of them so that she could stay alive for another day. She did this for a
thousand and one nights until finally the king falls in love with her and he makes
