For me, this story was very enjoyable to read because it's plot was easy to follow, yet the moral and concepts could be applied in complex ways as metaphors. I am familiar with the nature of parrots to be able to mimic human noises, however, according to this story this requires training, unlike the mimicking of a sao bird. Of course this bird is not known to man today, but after reading about it, I thought of it much like a sound recorder. This reminded me of modern day security controversial topics, where the government or another party is recording and monitoring your everyday activity through technology. In the story, a man needed food, so he stole another man's buffalo. After the man insists that he did not commit this crime, the listening sao bird reports what he actually saw. As a pet of the man, this shows that although this bird species is incredibly smart and able to use domesticated methods of verbal communication, the bird does not have a sense of what is socially acceptable. The bird is simply honest, only reporting what he sees regardless of whether it would have negative effects on his owner or whether is was just or unjust. The elaborate plan the man made to sabotage what the bird would say to the court displays his intellectual abilities despite the harshness and cruelty of trapping the bird in the jar. The sao bird, once again reports the truth of what he is asked, but this time, the man sabotaged what he thought was the truth about the whether. This part of the story made my sympathize for the bird. The fact that the creature was a bird instead of a human, it's false mimicking of what he thought he saw, resulted in the bird getting banned and shamed.
Comments
Post a Comment