Dadie and Diop

      I very much enjoyed the works by Dadie and Diop that we had to read this week for class. They both featured motifs that can also be found in the folklore of Western culture and others as well as those that are uniquely African. "The Mirror of Dearth" (Dadie) featured a magical mirror (a common feature in European fairy tales such as those recorded by the Grimm brothers) that would cause Kacou Ananze to lose all of his wealth if he looked into it, which has striking parallels to the Forbidden Fruit from the Garden of Eden in the Genesis creation story.        Another interesting feature that appears in both Dadie's and Diop's work is the role of the large reptiles in their stories, a feature that appears to be uniquely African. In "The Hunter and the Boa" (Dadie), a boa (a type of large snake) has the power to grant a poor bush hunter the means of aquiring great wealth and power of his own. The boa also exhibits wisdom by ultimately allowing the hunter to have to make an important decision, become poor again or die. In "Mother Crocodile" (Diop), the title character is a very wise matriarch whose children refuse to listen to at their own great expense.
     The presentation of large reptiles, in this case a great serpent and an aged crocodile, as sources of wisdom and power is, I suggest, a result of African people's experience with such creatures and the knowledge that in order to have attained such great sizes, they would have had to have lived very long lives during which it may be believed that they gained a great deal of experience and wisdom.