1. Peter Buur
2/16/10
L.A. Hour 4
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Compared With Aladdin
The two folk tales Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves are both
interesting stories. My class and I read Ali Baba and watched the movie
Aladdin. The purpose of this compare and contrast is to better
understand the similarities and differences of these two stories.
Both of the main characters are men. Their names start with A, they
are both very poor at the beginning, (Aladdin is a street thief), yet they
are both very honest (except for Aladdin's stealing) and humble.
The stories are both Arabian folk tales that have huge caves of
treasure at the beginning. Also they both have really bad guys, Jafar in
Aladdin, and the thief "leader" in Ali Baba.
The two secondary main characters are both women that are very
bold. They have their own ideas and use them to help the main
characters. Their names are Morgiana and Jasmine.
The caves in the stories both require some sort of magic to open the
caves. In Aladdin a specific person had to open it. In Ali Baba they had to
say "Open Sesame" to get in , and "Close Sesame" to get out. One person
dies in both of the caves.
In Aladdin it is the man (Aladdin) who is the clever one, however in Ali
Baba the woman (Morgiana) is the clever one. But Ali Baba and Jasmine
are both clever, just not AS clever.
Ali Baba has tons of violence over 40 People die from being sliced into
six parts, burned with oil, and stabbed with a dagger. In Aladdin only one
minor character dies.
Nearly the whole story of Aladdin has magic. The animals talk too. In
Ali Baba no animals talk at all. The only magic in Ali Baba is to open the
cave.
Finally all around Ali Baba is much more believable there is no magic,
no talking animals, no genie, and most of all people just don't break out
singing while guards are trying to kill him...
As you can see i personally don't think there are a lot of similarities.
However there are lots and lots of differences. They are both good
stories and I have reviewed a lot of the connections. As the title implies
this was to better understand the story which I do.