Friday, April 17, 2009
"Don't You Have Any Donkeys in Your Country" Blog
What a great story! At first I wasn’t really interested in the American rug dealer’s travels through Anatolia, but by the time I got to the antique counterfeiters I became more interested. I found intriguing how the children were so young and cute and yet they were very successful panhandlers. It reminded me of the book we had for summer reading: Colibri. In Colibri, Rosa’s “Uncle” says he takes care of her because she brings her luck, and one day she will make him rich. In a way this is true, because having cute young Rosa with him assists him when he pretends to be blind and begs. When people see Rosa with her blind “father”, they immediately feel bad and are more inclined to give money. This runs along the lines of the young artifact sellers. The whole family spends free time at home many counterfeit artifacts out of anything they can get their hands on, and then the kids go and sell them. The parents use the kids to sell the fake artifacts because no tourists would expect a fake from a sincere young child, desperately in need of money. Although the children seem to make a hefty profit, my guess is that most of the money goes to the parents or relatives. The fact that kids are being used to do the adults’ dirty work appalls me and I wish to see it recognized in the short story.
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I'd also like to add that not only is the author's storyline great, but his use of humor is also extremely good, adding the story a "comedy sense." The title itself is already very humurous, and the whole idea of the ARE (American Rug Expert's) travels in Anatolia are extremely funny, with all the sellers' tricks and the whole idea of bargaining. I also find the comparison to Colibri great-tourists have a sense of sympathy for the poor people that are selling,and as Alex said, Rosa made those tourists feel sympathetic and give money. However, the only thing that I didn't really like was the fact that the story moved along very quickly and I didn't quite get all the details. I thought that I finally realized the reason he was disgraced in the beggining, but the author didn't make it totally clear. Overall, however, I agree with Alex that the book was very intriguing and that the authors's humor made it even better.
ReplyDeleteyeah, I agree with you. I was kind of bored in the first page, but when I got to the part when the peasants were selling fake artifacts and the bargaining for the "donkey" (actually the rug.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I disagree with you about people using cute children to get people to buy things. I think that the tourists are just stupid and really naive and are buying the products just because they supposedly are really old, not because children are selling them. If adults were selling them, I think the same thing would happen.