There are many literature genres, one of the most popular ones are trickster tales. Trickster tales are mainly about tricks one character might pull on the other character. Some examples of trickster tales are Doc Rabbit Bruh Fox and Tar Baby and The Toad and the Donkey. Doc Rabbit Bruh Fox and Tar Baby written by Virginia Hamilton about Doctor Rabbit (Doc Rabbit) and Brother Fox (Bruh Fox) were making a house, Bruh Fox had cream that he kept for himself, Doc Rabbit kept on scaring bruh fox to get the cream. Bruh Fox got concerned and thought that Doc Rabbit was suspicious, so he tricked him by tar baby. Then the rabbit told a lie, Bruh fox believed him and then Doc rabbit won the final round of the trick. The Toad and the Donkey written by Toni Cade Bambara about a race between the toad and the donkey, the toad was slow but he asked his family members for help to “win” the race by using tricks. He made the donkey scared and never wanted to race again. In both stories there were a lot of tricks that characters made/used to win against each other.
Characters in both stories had their own strength and weakness in order to either get tricked or to trick someone. There is usually a trickster and an opponent or victim, although sometimes they don't have trickster and opponent instead both characters are trickster and victims. In the two stories, it has both appeared that they have places where they are good at, strength, and places where they are weak at, weakness. They use the other people’s weaknesses to trick them, their tricks are their strength. In Doc Rabbit Bruh Fox and Tar Baby, Doc Rabbit and Bruh Fox had different strengths and weaknesses. For Doc Rabbit, his strengths are making weird and scary sounds, lying, cheating and quick reactions, though his weaknesses are curiosity and anger issues. On the opposite hand Bruh Fox’s strength is that he is clever, but he is easy to frighten, easy to be fooled, stubborn and he does things that other people ask not to do. Unlike Doc Rabbit Bruh Fox and Tar Baby, The Toad and the Donkey has a trickster and victim. The Toad is the trickster and The Donkey is the victim, The toad’s strengths are intelligence and strong will to will and his weakness is that he is slow. On the contrary, the Donkey is fast, but he is also stupid, easily fooled, arrogant, undetermined and easily discourage. Every character from a trickster tale has strength and weakness, they might be a trickster or a victim/opponent.
We see all of these tricks that they do to each other, but how do they win these tricks battles? They have many strategies to win their tricks battle, although mainly is to find the victim’s weakness and target that. In both stories the trickster used the opponents’ weak spot to make tricks. Bruh Fox most likely knows that Doc Rabbit is curious and has anger issues so he made Tar baby, knowing that Doc Rabbit will be stubborn and express his anger on tar baby. Doc Rabbit also probably knows that Bruh Fox will do what he says not to do, therefore Doc Rabbit won the last battle. In the other story, Toad knows that the donkey cares about reputation and the donkey brags, therefore his trick made him stop running because he gave up thinking that he will not be able to win against Toad. All the tricks that were used in the two stories, were using the weakness of the victim. By using the weakness of one, they can win a trick battle against the other.
Not all tricks are for entertainment, some tricks have reasons. Trickster doesn’t always do tricks for fun and entertainment, some do it for good reasons. Not everyone is wicked and wants to trick people without reasons that are good. In Doc Rabbit, Bruh Fox and Tar Baby, Bruh Fox wanted to teach a lesson to Doc Rabbit, telling him that he should first of all not drink/touch other people’s things without permission and he should stop his anger issues. Bruh Fox has reasons to trick Doc Rabbit because first for revenge, he didn’t even get a bit of his cream and it was all gone and secondly for giving him a lesson. Toad had tricked the donkey because maybe the donkey is too full of himself, and “underestimated the toad” the Toad maybe just wanted to say that they should underestimate someone by appearance. There are many reasons why a trickster would like to trick someone, one of the reasons might be for fun and amusement, though it is not always the case.
Among the many genres of literature, trickster tales are one of the most popular. The main theme of trickster tales is that one character pulls a trick on another. For both stories, the characters had their own strengths and weaknesses in order to trick someone or get tricked themselves. In most stories, there is a trickster and an opponent or victim, although sometimes both the trickster and victim are the same character. It's amazing how they can beat each other with all of these tricks. But how do they win? To win their tricks battle, they use a variety of strategies, but the main one is to find the victim's weakness and take advantage of it. There are some tricks that are not just for entertainment. There are some tricks that serve a purpose. It is not always a trickster that does tricks for fun and entertainment. There are some tricksters who do them for a great reason as well. Not everyone is wicked and wants to trick people without good reasons.
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