Nuestra Vida

In an ancient Arabian village two boys listen attentively to their father as he tells them a story from One Thousand and One Nights. At the end of each story the boys will acknowledge that there is a moral to be learned. Although the stories have many different morals they all in particular teach one, the significance of life which I think is the key element of these stories.

There are a few different values in which life is portrayed in this story. There is "self-sacrificing," it's very much like selfless love but with out the whole love dilemma. For example, my interpretation of "self-sacrificing" life is when Shaharazad risked her life for her father's life, by marring the king and asking her father the Wezir nothing in return. Even though it was not actually stated in the story that the king would have the Wezir killed it was most likely that he would have been killed do to lake of accomplishment against the king. In any case that wasn't the only reason Shaharazad married the king, she stated, "either I shall die, and be a ransom for one of the daughters of the Muslims, or I shall live, and be the cause of their deliverance from him." Which means she is risking her self to be killed like the rest of the virgin girls or live and save any other virgin girl from being killed?

The opposite of "self-sacrificing" life of course would have to be self-life. For this is that a person only cares about their own well being and no one else. The person that showed this affections was the Moorish sorcerer from "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," sorcerer tricked Aladdin and his mother in thinking he was a good man. Another person that showed "self-life" was King Shahriyar, Even though it's not explicitly defined in the intro it seemed to me that the king only cared about his self being. I found proof of this by analyzing his actions towards woman, the way he had no mercy of killing.