The Camel Driver and the Adder reminds me of a story that I think I read in Laura's mythology and folklore class (I can't remember what unit it was in) about a genie who is saved from the ocean by a fisherman. As soon as he fisherman finds and releases he genie, the genie says that he is going to kill the fisherman. The fisherman tries to convince the genie to reconsider and go on his way, but the genie refuses. In the end, the genie is tricked back into his jar (I think i was a jar) like the fox tricked the adder in this story, and thrown back into the sea.
While these two stories were very similar, I liked the Camel Driver and the Adder story more because of it's connection to how humans treat the world around them. Unlike with the genie, who just decided that he would kill the person who found him, the adder had his ideas about how the world worked from seeing how humans treated others. Because of this idea, he logically decided that if humans would harm animals that helped them, they couldn't be trusted and he should do the same. While it is extremely ungrateful and the Camel driver was right to trap the snake again, there was a least a reason for he snake to do what he did and also let the moral of the story be to treat everything and everyone that helps you kindly and fairly.
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| Loch Shin Adder. Wikimedia |
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