The Role Of Shahrazad In The Thousand And One Nights

One could argue that Shahrazad from The Thousand and One Nights should be considered a hero for many reasons. From the surface, Shahrazad is noble and wealthy because of her father’s position as advisor to the king, she is identifiable and human, she is selfless by working for the greater good of the community, and she is brave for sacrificing herself to try and end the King’s reign of terror. King Shahrayar would sleep with a new woman each night and order her to be killed the following day. This system was slowly depleting the town of young, available women. Shahrazad wanted to end this horrid cycle, so she devised a plan to tell the King a story every night, and she would leave the story off on a cliff hanger. This was effective because it ensured that if the King wanted to hear the rest of the story the next

The plan demonstrates that Shahrazad has another heroic characteristic of being intelligent, which is her special skill, along with being noble, wealthy, brave, selfless, and identifiable, which are all of Shahrazad’s strengths. Shahrazad’s heroic and strong traits preclude her weaknesses because her weaknesses are not entirely necessary to be considered a hero. Shahrazad’s weaknesses are that she does not have an internal problem, does not go on a journey, and thus does not have any character growth. However, Shahrazad’s strengths preclude her weaknesses because not all heroes or heroines need to have a problem or develop their character. For example, fireman can easily be deemed as heroes for saving lives, but they do not necessarily have internal problems or growth of their character. Thus, Shahrazad should be considered a hero because her strengths of her nobility, wealth, identifiability, selflessness, bravery, and intelligence all out weight her weaknesses of lacking an internal problem, character grow, and progressing through a