Trickster Tales by Matt Dembicki

In the Raven the Trickster by John Active, the raven is seemed to be mischievous. First, he kicks the deqs, and when his foot gets caught, he lies to get the deq to release him. This was the first sign that portrayed the raven as a trickster. Not only was the raven mischievous, the raven was also very inquisitive. Normally when a beluga whale opens its mouth, one does not typically dive into it. However, in the raven’s case of curiosity he flies right in and gets eaten by the beluga. When the raven arrives in the stomach of the beluga, he meets a woman with a lamp over her shoulder. The women specifically told the raven not to touch the lamp in her absence. Knowing the curious nature of the raven, he disobeyed and touched it anyway. This had led to the killing of the beluga whale. Not only does the raven get the beluga whale killed, the raven fool the hunters into giving up the beluga meat. This story gave a very direct and clear picture of what a true trickster should look like. Though the story was quite straightforward, I came to realize that the woman inside the belly looked very similar to the hunters that killed the beluga. This begs the question of was it really a coincidental that when the raven touched the lamp, the beluga was killed? The next story of the mink and the wolf was less clarity of who the trickster really was. Simply because both the mink and the wolf had traits of a trickster. First off, the mink who tried to trick the fish into swimming along the edge of the river in order to hunt them. Secondly when the wolf talks the mink to sleep and eats the fish he catches, and tricks the mink into believing that he had ate it when he woke up. I felt that the wolf was the real trickster because not only did the wolf eat the fish, he tricked the mink into believing that he had ate the fish and that he actually satisfied his appetite.