The Myth of the Condor

Just flying away with another captive.

Hello, dear reader. This week's tale, The Myth of the Condor, comes to us from Peru. If you're not familiar with this story, click the link above to read it. If you are, continue reading and we'll analyze it together.

This story has something you very rarely see in fairy tales: an actual courtship. This guy and girl actually get to know each other and get to like each other before they go live together and start having children. Granted, he kidnapped her, but apparently she fell in love with him anyway. I have questions about the condor. Was he just being a jerk or did he have some sort of reason for kidnapping this girl? Could he only appear as a human outside of his nest for so many days before he couldn't be seen by humans again? We are given no explanation, so it looks like the condor is just a jerk.

I am also curious about this girl. She grew to like and trust this handsome young man. Even after he kidnapped her, she fell in love with him, had his child, and still loved him. However, even though she loved the condor, there is nothing in the story about her asking to see her father or any kind of negotiation. It seems she can either live with the condor and miss her father or she can live with her father and miss the condor. It bothers me that we're not told why she can't have both. Again, it just makes the condor look like a villain for keeping her away from her father.

We also know very little about the girl's father. She certainly missed him, but did he miss her? We don't know if he went to look for her. Did the girl tell her father about the handsome stranger? Did he know she was befriending a man no one else had seen? Or did her father see them together one day and decide not to bother them? We know the girl's father cared enough to come rescue her from the condor's nest. When the plot needed him to act, he did, but that's the only thing he does in this story. I like this story; the set-up intrigues me. I just wish we had more detail about the characters in it.

The moral of this story is: don't let anyone pick you up. Alternatively, if you find yourself trapped in a condor's nest, make sure you have something to bribe a hummingbird with so you can be freed.

Think of something I missed? Have an alternate moral to this story? Know a story you want me to talk about? Comment below!