Reading Notes: The Dead Mother

The story I read this week came from the Europe Unit: Russian Folktales section. The specific story that popped out to be was The DeadMother. This was a very interesting story that did a great job at grabbing the reader’s attention throughout and until the end of the story. The story began with a child being born and shortly after the mother died. The father new the child needed a mother figure in its life so hired an old woman. The would only cry during the day and wouldn’t take food, but then would sleep sound at night. The old woman was confused why this could be. So the Woman stayed up one night to figure it out, and what she found out finally after many people helped her catch this was the dead mother was knelt by the child’s bed and was feeding it. But then when the onlookers turned the light on the dead mother walked out of the room and when they went to the child, they saw it was dead as well. Really the only thing I could gather from this story as an external meaning as that you can not force something upon a child when the child does not want that.

(I believe this image depicts this story well. Source: Dead Mother)