The stories about Br'er Rabbit written by Joel Chandler Harris were written as lessons to be taught through oral literature. His stories were to be read out loud. Everyone says its too hard to read them, but they aren't meant to be read. They are meant to be told. If you have to read it over and over again to understand, then try reading it out loud. I think once you have done that you will get into character and be able to pick up the dialect better and understand the story better. I liked these stories they were very interesting, and the story itself caused major discusion in class because of how it was written. But what we failed to do was remember it was meant to be told, not read.
Posted by ZacharyHarvey at November 29, 2004 07:02 PMActually the difficulty is that he ignorantly translated an oral story into a prose and then told people this is an oral story. Actually that makes it a prose. He wanted a "white" audience who does not interact with blacks to be able to read these stories. Well Harris, make an audio-recording, or bring an African American up from the south and make him tell the story in a theater 5 times a day for a good profit.
Posted by: Stephan Puff at December 1, 2004 07:51 PM