After presenting my own presentation on German (The Three Spinners), English (Tom Tit Tot) Folktale and observed presentation on Hawaiian folktale (The Despotic Chiefs of Kau), I believe that those stories are quite different. They are differ in terms of  culture, theme, and folktale writing style. But they are similar in purpose of recording stories.

I believe that geography play very important role in the formation of folktale and culture. Since Hawaii is an island and other two stories are from mainland of Europe. In term of culture. For German and English folktale, both stories share some common elements in tradition of European such as woman’s task —spinning flax, class difference (peasants— King and Queen), and emphasize on power of upper class man (King). In Hawaiian folktale, since Hawaii is an island people’s main daily task is fishing and class difference (man—chief). In Hawaiian folktale, we can feel people being oppressed hardly because of chief. (They have to give up all the fishes to the chief, left nothing to themselves).

In term of theme. Readers can get very different messages from those stories. In German and English folktale, it mainly focuses on woman’s traditional task-spinning and their classes. The only way woman can climbs the social ladder to escape the tradition (spinning) is through using trick. But final decision on whether or not they can climb the social ladder is on the King. This shows that no matter how hard lower level class people try to improve their social status, they will not success. The real power lie on the highest level of social class, they are the one who has the ability to change lower level class people’s fate.  In Hawaiian folktale, all three little stories show us that people suffered hardly under chief’s control (they have to give up all fishes, they have to prepare foods for chief and follow him to anyplace, and they are force to build temple that might result in killing themselves). They want to have rebellion against authorities that oppressed them so hard. They want to have a leader that can benefit all people in the island. And they executed, people finally free from chief’s control. It is all base on lower class people. They have the ability to overthrow the authority.

In term of folktale writing style. “The Three Spinners”, “Tom Tit Tot”and U.S Slave Stories all offered the fantasy of an escape from life of painful labor (Anthology pg.932). Hawaiian folktale, I think  it appears more real to me. It expresses in the way that can connect with people. The group presented the Hawaiian folktale also mentioned that French Revolution is very similar to those stories. They all deal with unpopularity of King/Leader, high tax burden on people. And finally, people who suffered from high tax burden rebel against King/Leaders to gain their freedom.

They are very similar in purpose of recording stories. German Grimm Bothers  collected and edited stories because they are afraid of Napoleon’s French armies invaded and imposed new laws will wipe out generation of tradition German lore. English folktale, Joseph Jacobs collected and edited stories because he is afraid of Grimm Brothers folktale stories will wipe out local England’s tradition. Finally, Mary Wiggen Pukui in Hawaiian folktale She was worried that given the upheavals in Hawaii, ancient oral traditional would be forgotten unless she recorded them.