Tag Archives: fiction

“Tam and Cam” (Vietnam)

I read the story of “Tam and Cam”, a Cinderella story taking place in Vietnam. Over the years, I’ve read a few versions of Cinderella stories, and all of them usually contain a plot with a happy ending and no violence involved. However, “Tam and Cam” is very different from other versions. In this story, the Cinderella character, Tam, experiences many violent and gruesome obstacles in her quest to achieve a better future. A common Cinderella tradition that is followed in this story is how Tam meets her husband at the festival, where she loses one of her shoes. An interesting thing about this story is that the Cinderella character is killed multiple times by the step-mother and step-sister. This never happens to the Cinderella character in other stories.

First, the step-mother asks Tam to climb a tree and collect the best nuts to prepare an offering on her father’s death anniversary. During, the climb, the step-mother chops the tree and Tam falls into a deep pond and drowns. However, as this story focuses strongly on reincarnation, Tam is reborn as a nightingale bird and flies off to her husband’s castle. At the castle, Tam’s step-sister, Cam who is now the wife of the king, discovers that Tam is still alive in a bird form. Eventually, Tam is killed again, and her feathers allow her to be reincarnated into a tree. Afterwards, Tam is reincarnated into a fruit, which is given to an old lady who keeps and cares for the fruit. This fruit eventually reincarnates Tam back into human form.

The most gruesome part of this story happens when Cam was surprised by Tam’s beauty and wanted to learn how to become beautiful like her. Tam saw this as a perfect way to finally get revenge and told Cam to get in a hole, which she filled up with boiling water. Eventually, Tam made a sauce out of Cam’s body and sent it to her step-mother, who ended up eating it till she found a skull in the bottom and died from the shock.

http://www.furorteutonicus.eu/germanic/ashliman/mirror/tam2.html

What is Fiction?

Today we introduced ourselves by sharing what have we read recently.

We also shared our thoughts on the questions:

What is Fiction? What do we think about when we think about fiction?

Answer in a word or a short phrase.

Here are your responses:

Fables
Stories
Imagination
Made-up
Not real
Creative thoughts
Imagination
Not real
Exaggerated
Fairy tale
Made-up
Imagination
Anything is possible
Unreal
Creativity
Believable
Not history
Not fact
Not real life
Drama
Conflict
Relatable
Made-up
Fairy tale
Not true
Based on real life
Imagination

Infinite potential
Creativity
Creativity
Alternate universe
Alternate reality
Fairy tales
Not based on real life
Not current events
Fairy tale
Creative imagination
Imagination
Pretty
Neat
Fun
Stories people come up with
Not real
Imagination
Fake
Imaginary
Mysteries
Made-up
Fantasy
Creative
Intangible
Unreal world
Ideas and emotions of writer act as life force

Fantasy
Mystical
Creative ideas
Fabricated
Educational
Teach morality
Made-up creatures
Paranormal
Fake people
More than books
Anything not real life
Knights
Magic
Dragons
Portal into another realm
Untrue stories
Ideal version of reality
Imagination
Imagination
Adventures
Fantasy
Murder!
Made up
Imagination
Creativity
Fantasy

 Represented a different way, here are your responses:
Wordle of "What is Fiction?" Graffiti-style font

www.wordle.net