Jake Fernando
Eng 2850
4/11/17
King Shahrayar and his Mind
The collection of tales known as Thousand and One Nights, starts with a frame story that connects all the tales back to this main focal point. This frame story revolves around Shahrayar, formally known as the King of India. While the story is developing, a greater sense of Shahrayar’s personality and how he deals with is problems becomes more clear to the readers. The way he goes along in the tale challenges what is socially acceptable in contemporary times, differentiating from the general assumptions about someone in that position. Shahrayar’s actions and personality are derived from the environment and sense of entitlement that the story places him in.
The frame tale starts with his brother’s visiting King Shahrayar. His brother was cheated on a mere day or two before he was coming to the kingdom of Shahrayar. As a result of this he was depressed throughout the entire visit which made Shahrayar very concerned. Shahrayar tried every thing he could to cheer his brother up but had no idea what was going on to make him feel this way. Eventually, Shahrayar went on a hunting trip and left his brother behind so that he could cheer himself up. While Shahrayar was away, his brother saw Shahrayar’s wife cheating with many slaves, which made the brother very happy since after seeing what can happen to someone as powerful as Shahrayar in his own home, the brother’s misfortune seems minuscule now. When Shahrayar heard and later saw this happen, he went into a state of depression; one much worse than his brother’s. Eventually he killed his wife and everyone involved, starting what would be a murderous spree on all the women he had sex with. Ultimately he found a girl he did not kill and they lived happily ever after.
The environment where the characters are put in normalize a situation where the husband could get away with sleeping with many women while the women is killed for fornicating with more than one man. Back to the 9th century, this type of behavior, where the king can kill most of the women in his town might have been tolerated to a certain extent;
“It became King Shahrayar’s custom to take every night the daughter of a merchant
or a commoner, spend the night with her, hen have her put to death the next morning. He continued to do this until all the girls perished, their mothers mourned, and there arose a clamor among the fathers and mothers…”
The people in the land did not care until their daughters were murdered by the hands of Shahrayar. When the wife of Shahrayar and all of her constituents were killed, there is no evidence of anyone in the land mourning or even caring in the slightest. So this type of behavior, where if women are found doing something wrong, will lead to them immediately be killed by their significant other are generally accepted in this environment. As soon as their kin is involved, all they can do is be frustrated while unable to take action against the wrongdoer. Even after all is said and done, King Shahrayar lives happily ever after and the readers might not feel a sense of sympathy since the story minimized the impact of the murder of all those women, simply glossing over them in a few lines or so.
Shahrayar is in a setting where even the generally accepted version of contemporary times includes his heinous act with no repercussions; highlighting his sense of entitlement. The story goes over it so quickly that it makes it seem that killing women is just a common occurrence. The power that the king has grants him to do whatever he may please, regardless of what the public might say or think. From this notion, one can see how power can get to someone’s head; prompting them to lose their morals and go power hungry. His brother did not go off on a killing spree after what had happened, he simply went through his stage of sorrow emotional distress – after killing his wife which seems somewhat righteous in the early years. There is no story of the brother swearing off trust of women and killing the women he sleeps with after one night in their respective lands because the brother’s morality stems from the amount of power he has. The brother is a king so he does have power, however, he rules a small part that was given to him while Shahrayar seems to rule a whole world in comparison.
Shahrayar’s decisions derived from moral corruption are ultimately made up of emotions of confusion and anger. His irrationality stems from feeling lost and being betrayed by a loved one in such a matter while being a very powerful and respected man. When in power, one feels almost invincible but once tragedy hits, that person will either go toward depression or vengeance. Shahrayar felt the need to blame all women as a whole for the actions of his wife while a regular person would just feel bad without any indication of attempting to murder their loved one or everyone they fornicate with afterwards. Shahrayar’s confusion and anger mixed in with the ability to take action with no consequence pulls him toward a reckless and bloody path.
Shahrayar’s environment nurtures his power making it so even after killing all those women, he still has women coming after him knowing exactly what they are getting into. The brother would probably get into a lot of trouble if he were taking the same course of action due to his amount of power he has/does not have. Even after all of the murder, he gets to live happily with a woman who had to learn to keep him under control. She had to tell him stories to keep in interested in her, using the same technique one would use on children. He felt entitled to kill all those women and only stopped when he grew curious about the tales this woman was telling, basically stopping due to his own self-interest. Him being king makes a psychological change where he feels entitled to whatever he wants while doing anything with no punishment. His power combined with his overall morality leads to a very fragile person, with the ability to go ballistic at any moment. A single act of disloyalty started a wave of murder by an insecure man hell-bent on power, and because of his environment he still gets what he wants and gets to be happy.