Sophie
When reading a foreign piece of literature, there are many ways to find cultural clues that can help in the overall understanding of the piece. The folktale I read was Shimch’ong , the Blind Man’s Daughter which is a Korean story about putting others before your self. Something common that comes up in folktales, myths or stories such as this, religious beliefs often come up as well as attitudes towards them. In this piece, clues about religion were found when Shim was told to offer 300 bushels of rice to Buddha so he’d regain his site, which tells us this is a Buddhist society. Values and what is important also comes up in these types of stories a lot. For example, the biggest value here was family importance and putting others before your self, when Shimch’ong sacrificed herself so that her father could see again. Clues about the stories geography are that it is set in Korea since it is a Korean folktale. We also know more specifically that they live bear a river since that was where the Dragon King lived. We found clues about Shim and Shimch’ong’s daily life when in the beginning it was stated in the first paragraph that they were poor and a small family of two who lived their lives as beggars. General issues in the story were hinted to us when the merchants had to please the Dragon King or else he’d change the weather that showed that they had an issue with pleasing him and his needs. There was also the more obvious issue of Shim dealing with his handicap of being blind while trying to survive. There were also issues of raising a daughter without a wife and issues with the people having to provide the King with whatever he wanted, like when he wanted to marry Shimch’ong, he got what he wanted. Clues about the language are that they most probably speak Korean since the setting is in Korea, and they speak very properly in their dialogue with one another and don’t use and slang terms whatsoever.
