Coyote And Anansi Trickster Stories

Trickster tales have been told throughout time to convey culturally important beliefs in an entertaining way. This is demonstrated by highlighting similarities and differences in the trickster tales “How Stories Came to Earth,” “Coyote Steals Fire,” and “Master Cat.” While each of these stories share many characteristics such as anthropomorphism, utilizing cunning and deceit to achieve their goals, and sharing their gain with others.

“How Stories came to Earth” is a anthropomorphism tale about a spider named Anansi, he wanted to collect stories told by the Sky-God. The Sky-God conducted Anansi to collect the following things, python, leopard, hornets, and a fairy. In “How Stories Came to Earth” and “Coyote Steals Fire”, both Coyote and Anansi

In the story a cat is the only thing left to the youngest son of the miller. The cat, in hopes to please his master and show his value creates a plan in order to save himself. In his plan, Master Cat has the expectation of gaining wealth and therefore happiness for his owner through his tricks and decisive lies. Master cat shares similarities and differences with the other trickster tales by the ways he utilizes his cunningness to achieve his goals. The cat in order to fulfill his goals produces a plan. This also happens in “How Stories Came to Earth” and “Coyote Steals Fire” when the tricksters create plans using their cunningness and sly skills in hopes to obtain their goals. Differences between their plans is that in “Coyote Steals Fire” and “Master Cat” both of these plans were made on their own, while in “How Stories Came to Earth”, Anansi collaborates with his wife to make his plan successful. Also in the trickster tales each of the tricksters have their own way of using their unique skills in their own way to achieve their goals. Anansi and Master Cat both somewhat harm people in they way that they trick them. Master Cat threatens to chop up the peasant farmers if they don't lie for him and he also kills the ogre, while Anansi

The story “Coyote Steals Fire” is a tale about how fire came to earth. The main character Coyote tricks thunder in a game of dice, which leads thunder in giving up the fire for the entire world. Coyote gave fire to the word, just like Anansi gave the stories to the world. Unlike Coyote and Anansi, Master Cat did everything for himself. In the story, “Puss in Boots” Master Cat overheard the miller’s son say, “ I'm going to eat that cat”. This is what motivated Master Cat to do all of the odd and outrageous things he did. Coyote did all of his critical thinking on his own, just like Master Cat did. Unlike Coyote and Master Cat, Anansi didn’t do his critical thinking on his own. Anansi went to his wife for help. According to the story “How Stories Came to Earth” Anansi after receiving his orders from the sky god, went to his wife for ideas on how to catch all of the creatures he needed to get the stories. Even though Coyote, Master Cat, and Anansi have similar and different ideas they are all trying to reach their overall