Final Juha Reading

I've reached the end of my journey through Juha and I have to say it was one my favorite books we read this semester. I admit some of the other readings were boring at times but Tales of Juha was a very easy read and enjoyable. I found the last section to be very similar to the first two but it had a few distinctions. As the book switched chapters the stories shifted from being primarily about wives and donkeys to judges and thieves (but still with a good dose of donkeys).  The chapters again showed the many sides of Juha as he portrayed cowardice, and wisdom among other qualities. I thought several of the stories in the Justice and Generosity chapter were very clever, even though they were not that funny. The story about the baker’s coins was especially clever but the story about the man whose cloak got stolen was a bit ridiculous. I don’t think any thief would be stupid enough to just let go of the cloak when Juha said “You, the thief  give the cloak back to its owner.”

My favorite story from this section and maybe from the entire book was on page 142-143. A prince thinks he has written a wondrous poem but Juha is not impressed like everyone else. As a punishment the prince sends Juha to the stable for a month. Juha comes back from the stable and the prince is reading his latest poem so Juha leaves. The prince asks Juha where he is going and he replies “to the stable.” Obviously Juha doesn't like the second poem either and knows the usual punishment for such an offense.

The last chapter was primarily a critique of tyrants with most of the stories  centered around the tyrannical figure Tamerlane. This type of criticism also showed up when I researched Arab humor earlier in the semester. The Arab world is dealing with these types of leaders today and uses humor to deal with their situation just as they did centuries ago with stories in the last chapter of Juha. In one of these stories Juha is asked who is more important the sultan or the farmer. Juha explains that the farmer is more important because without him the sultan would starve. This particular story isn't all that humorous but instead has a more political message about different roles in society.

Overall Juha was a fun character to read about as he switched from scholar, to judge, to thief  to fool, and every character in between.