Tricks for Kids, Essay Example

The coyote is often used as a trickster character for tales in Native American communities.  In Europe.  It is often the Fox. Trickster can appear as either human or animal characters.  In North America, the most popular animal figures on the coyote, Rayburn and hair.  The coyote is often depicted as a master of deceit in disguise.  Trickster disobeys conventional behaviour and human representatives are often the jester, clown or magician / illusionists.

The trickster is central to the stories told by American folklore.  There are literally hundreds of tales covering characters like: the coyote — master thief, iktomi, the shape shifting Spiderman of the Lakota Indians, vecho  of the Cheyenne and Glooshap of the passamaquoddy.  These myths and legends have been handed down through American folklore.  The trickster is unique to its own culture, however, the coyote of the American Indian folklore has reappeared as the Looney Tunes character.  The Road  Runner. The character of  ‘Q’ in Star Trek the next generation is another classic trickster character.  The stories were aimed at educating the young and essentially aimed at teaching children morals and the differences between right and wrong.

Myths and folklore tales  do address universal concerns, consider ” The subjects of myths reflect the universal concerns of mankind throughout history: birth, death, the afterlife, the origin of man and the world, good and evil and the nature of man himself. A myth taps into a universal cultural narrative, the collective wisdom of man. An excellent illustration of the universality of these themes is that so many peoples who have had no contact with each other create myths that are remarkably similar.”  (morningmoon).

Many of the trickster stories have similarities between different cultures. The North American Indians believe in a Golden Age and this is similar to that of the ancient Greeks.

Works Cited

morningmoon. venusoverpan. 10 1 2010. 23 7 2010 <http://venusoverpan.ning.com/profiles/blogs/myths-1>.