1. Ancient African Literature is known by their myths, legends, and folktales.

These texts largely

reflect their culture, beliefs, and their environment. One typical characteristic of an African text
is the role of nature. The main characters are usually animals and stories are set in a forest,
desert or a body of water. Characters use plants, rocks, and other natural inanimate objects to
progress the story. One good example is the trickster story of Anansi. Anansi is a spider who
tricked the Lion so the former can become the keeper of the stories. Anansi’s story involves lion,
snake, bamboo tree – things that are usually found in Africa.

Another typical and distinct characteristic is its brevity. African texts, especially the fables are
much shorter compared to the Literature of other countries. Their fables are usually written in a
paragraph or two and only have one or two characters. These are evident in the fables we
discussed like The Vixen and The Lioness and The Scorpion and the Frog. These fables are
succinct and simple that it needs a little bit thinking and the discussion on the part of the
readers to get the message. It’s written in this way because these African Literature is orally
passed on. In this way, it is easier to tell especially to children.

Lastly, African Literature always has a moral to teach. For Africa, Literature builds community.
Literature teaches value and by sharing these values, it builds their community. At the end of
their stories, we always get a number of values which serve as a reminder to the readers how
they should live life and deal with other people. For Africans, their community is the basic unit
of society and Literature teaches them to be a harmonious community.

2. The East Asian countries we discussed are China and Japan. Geographically, the two are close
neighboring countries and they share an interesting history of Literature.

These East Asian countries shared some similarities especially in the early stages of their
Literature. In the ancient times, China’s language has influenced many of its neighboring
countries especially Japan. In this same period, Japan had not invented a system of writing for
their language, so their earliest texts were mostly written in Chinese. Japan borrowed Chinese
characters to represent their language’s phonetics; thus, resulting to a complex system of
writing. It is said that Kojiki, the earliest recorded book in Japanese Literature, is mostly written
in a complex mixture of Chinese characters. With this, in its graphical sense, the early Literature
of China and Japan share the same aesthetics in writing their prose and poetry. Even until now,
it is evident that their characters resemble each other.

The two countries share almost the same writing style in poetry. The Chinese and Japanese
Literature are both known for its short rigid structure in writing. Chinese and Japanese
Literature give importance to meter, tone, and cadence. It is said that a Chinese poet “refrains
from being in exhaustive” and usually writes about the extreme ideals or emotions. One
example is O Oriole, Yellow Bird from The Book of Songs in the Chou Dynasty. This book is a
compilation of Chinese poetry that shows its compactness. On Japanese Literature, we have
learned about its various types of poetry, each having its own meter. Each line has its own
number of syllables and is usually either 5 or 7.
 When it comes to their themes, these two countries focus on their beliefs. In China, their
Literature focused on the teachings of Confucius and Lao Tzu. Their teachings are usually
expressed in one statement and this succinctness made them widely known in the world. Today,
everyone is familiar with the Golden Rule and Lao Tzu is often quoted in other texts. On the
other hand, one of Japan’s dominant religion is Shintoism which gives importance to nature. It is
noticeable that, aside from its brevity and structure, Japanese Literature always mentions
nature. Its most famous Haiku is a very good example of this. It talks about the motion and
stillness of nature and readers attribute them to deeper and complex themes and ideas.

3. The main message of this science fiction story is that people will always write about their lives,
their existence and it will stay for as long as people will read it.

As humans, we know that our existence is temporary. We know that there’s an end to all the
things we are capable of but we found a way to surpass this limit through writing. In writing, we
can immortalize our existence. Once we etch a story on a tablet, cave wall, or a paper, we leave
an imprint of ourselves and it will always be there for everyone to see. And when a person reads
it, we hope that what is written will be passed on to that person. He or she now brings an
imprint of ourselves that, even we stop to physically exist, our ideas, words, tone and being are
now carried out of that tablet or paper. In this way, we exist by being remembered. We might
not be physically present but our story is now being told to others who are still living.

As a new generation reads a story, they will breathe a new kind of life to it. Our stories will mix
up in their new stories. Our existence will take a new form as this new generation writes a new
story. However, not everything in our story will stay. Some will be forgotten, disregarded
because they may not make sense anymore in the new world just like how the Allatian scrape
away some book details through their nose. On the other hand, some will be kept in their
special places. These stories may not be used in the new world but will serve as a reminder of
the past. It reminds me of how Quatzoli’s stone brains are kept, waiting to be given life again.

Yes, our bodies will stop to exist at some point, but our stories, our writings will remain. It may
not last an absolute eternity, but there will always be one part of us that will remain. Because
for as long as we live, there will always be a story of us to tell. And for as long as there will be
people who will care enough to share this story, we will continue to exist in the words of the
future and in the time we will never know.

SOURCES:

https://www.britannica.com/art/Chinese-literature

https://www.britannica.com/art/Japanese-literature

JESSICA E. GENOTIVA