Coyote Steals Fire Trickster

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Much like the last story, the trickster Coyote in “Coyote Steals Fire” uses deception to achieve his goal. By taking advantage of Thunder’s competitive nature, Coyote starts a game of dice with the agreement of a prize of fire if Coyote wins, then cheats his way into winning. Because Thunder is so much slower than Coyote, Coyote uses this to his advantage and not only rearranges the dice so that he gets more points and Thunder gets less, but also “t[akes] a counting stick away from Thunder’s pile and add[s] it to his own” (Erdoes and Ortiz 45). With this method, Coyote wins the game, which means that Thunder has to give him fire as stated in their agreement made prior to the game. However, even though unable to prove it, Thunder knows that …show more content…
In the first story, although Anansi deceives four creatures into capture, the end result benefits society. When Nyame gives Anansi the stories, “he and his wife eagerly learn each of them...Everywhere you look, they still spin their webs for all to see” (Kaleki 42). Without Anansi and Aso’s trickery, the earth’s stories would still be unknown, but because of their curiosity and determination, the sky god rewards them with the stories and instead of keeping the stories to themselves, the spiders share them with everyone else on earth. Similarly, in the second story, before Coyote comes along, “people had no fire” (Erdoes and Ortiz 44). After winning the game with Thunder and using the trick of separating his insides and outsides, though, Thunder throws the ball of fire at Coyote’s outsides. Coyote then allows “every animal [to] t[ake] a piece of the fire and put it under its armpit or under its wing” (Erdoes and Ortiz 45). Even though the tricksters in the two stories use a method that hurts another creature to accomplish their goal, in the end their acts benefit society as a