Raven Scott
Dr. Craig Smith
ENG 108
Thursday 2nd May, 2016
Reflections on Location in Patricia Glinton Meicholas's An Evening in Guanima and Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men.

Oral tradition dates back to the beginning of time, this tradition includes folktales, myths, legends, songs, riddles and any other form of verbal communication. Different aspects of the tradition has been used in various ways, including for entertainment, education, providing histories, or to bring awareness to societal ills. While each country/society have their own oral traditions and folktales, there are those folktales that are shared by several different communities. However, even though different communities may share the same stories, inevitably, those stories will be changed based on the specific community’s culture, language , history and geographical location. The effects of location and history on the folktales within the community can be seen very clearly in the texts An Evening in Guanima by Patricia Glinton Meicholas, and Mules and Men by Zora Neal Hurston, respectively. ***You need a very strong thesis here***
In “Talkin Ol' Story: A Brief Survey of the Oral tradition in the Bahamas”, Patricia Glinton Meicholas describes the Bahamian ol' story as existing “in a dream time landscape where human beings exhibit a fluid morphology…”(Meicholas 10). Much of Bahamian oral tradition , like that of the African Americans, has been influenced by what has come before, during and after the trans Atlantic slave trade. The enslaved African brought with them a culture rich in oral traditionthat included songs, riddles, proverbs and stories. Many of these songs, games and stories have been passed down from generation to generation and form the bases of many of the folktales we have today in both Bahamian and African American cultures.
African influences can be found in the Bahamian