Reading Notes: Sindbad's First Voyage

Sindbad's first voyage is only necessary because he was foolish with his inheritance and wanted to bring riches to his family. He goes as a merchant and is selling goods island to island. They happen on an island that is only slightly above sea level. At this point, you know something is going to get bad just merely by that last sentence. They land and walk around a bit before starting a fire. Immediately after starting the fire, the 'island' begins to tremble. At this point, you must be thinking that maybe it is not an island after all. And you would be correct as the island is actually a whale and the whale plunges into the water leaving Sindbad to only hold afloat by a piece of wood. The next part of the story is him landing on an island and being treated well before finding his crew again and getting rich. But what happens from the whale to the island. There was little talk about him floating on a piece of wood to the island. When retelling this story, I could focus on this gap and describe in detail what Sindbad went through.

Floating on Wood Pexels

Bibliography: The Voyages of Sindbad from The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).