Sang Gagak and Sang Merak
“Cerita Sang Gagak dan Sang Merak”
This assignment requires me to choose a children story that I like and I grow up with and analyze the story. For the sake of the assignment, I chose a Malay fable titled “The Crow & The Peacock” (Cerita Sang Gagak dan Sang Merak).
The fable is about a crow and a peacock being best friends in the jungle. Both of the animals do not have any colours like they do now; they were white. Stumbling upon cans of paints in the jungle, they decided to take turns colouring each other with beautiful colours. The crow was creative and talented and it started to paint the body of the peacock until the peacock looked so magnificent. When the peacock’s turn came, the peacock decided to pour black paint all over the crow because the peacock was lazy and not gifted like the crow. When the crow realized that it had turned black, the crow was so furious and flies around the jungle calling for the peacock. For the Malays, that is the reason why nowadays the crow always make a sound “akk, akk” as a short for ‘merak’.
Fable characters are stereotypes with human strengths and weaknesses instead of multidimensional characters. A fable normally has only a few characters, sometimes just two: a hero and a villain. The main characters of this fable would be the crow and the peacock, as both characters represented their own significance in the story. The first important aspect of both characters is their original colour, which is white. The crow is honest, as we can see that the crow did its best to colour the peacock so that the peacock looked pretty (Sang Gagak yang dikenali sebagai seekor binatang yang kreatif dan berbakat mula melukis corak dan mewarnakan badan sang Merak.). The crow is also considerate, because when it found the cans of paints the crow immediately thought of the peacock because the peacock is the crow’s best friend (Lantas timbullah idea dalam diri Sang Gagak untuk menggunakan cat tersebut untuk mewarnakan dirinya yang tidak berwarna
This assignment requires me to choose a children story that I like and I grow up with and analyze the story. For the sake of the assignment, I chose a Malay fable titled “The Crow & The Peacock” (Cerita Sang Gagak dan Sang Merak).
The fable is about a crow and a peacock being best friends in the jungle. Both of the animals do not have any colours like they do now; they were white. Stumbling upon cans of paints in the jungle, they decided to take turns colouring each other with beautiful colours. The crow was creative and talented and it started to paint the body of the peacock until the peacock looked so magnificent. When the peacock’s turn came, the peacock decided to pour black paint all over the crow because the peacock was lazy and not gifted like the crow. When the crow realized that it had turned black, the crow was so furious and flies around the jungle calling for the peacock. For the Malays, that is the reason why nowadays the crow always make a sound “akk, akk” as a short for ‘merak’.
Fable characters are stereotypes with human strengths and weaknesses instead of multidimensional characters. A fable normally has only a few characters, sometimes just two: a hero and a villain. The main characters of this fable would be the crow and the peacock, as both characters represented their own significance in the story. The first important aspect of both characters is their original colour, which is white. The crow is honest, as we can see that the crow did its best to colour the peacock so that the peacock looked pretty (Sang Gagak yang dikenali sebagai seekor binatang yang kreatif dan berbakat mula melukis corak dan mewarnakan badan sang Merak.). The crow is also considerate, because when it found the cans of paints the crow immediately thought of the peacock because the peacock is the crow’s best friend (Lantas timbullah idea dalam diri Sang Gagak untuk menggunakan cat tersebut untuk mewarnakan dirinya yang tidak berwarna
References: Link, R. (2005). Living With Wildlife – Crows. Retrieved from http://wdfw.wa.gov/living/crows.pdf on November 6, 2012. Santrock, J. W. (2009). Educational Psychology (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Valdez, V. Literary Characteristics of Fables. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/info_8634703_literary-characteristics-fables.html on November 6, 2012. Crow Facts. Retrieved from http://www.jcrows.com/crowfct.htm on November 6, 2012. Sang Merak dan Sang Gagak. Retrieved from http://1001kisah.blogspot.com/ on November 6, 2012.