Week 4 Essay: Fake it Until You Make It

            In multiple stories of the Turkish Fairy Tales unit, the central character gets help from others (both supernatural and ordinary) to convince important figures that they possess some kind of useful skill. The characters are rewarded for their first false display of their skill, usually delivering them from poverty. Then, a similar situation again arises, and the character is called on to provide help. As the character does not really posses the needed ability, he must find another way out of the situation or will likely lose his head. Somehow, the character is able to succeed a second time, keep his lie a secret, and continue to prosper under false pretenses.

            The Imp of the Well provides one example of this “fake it until you make it” motif. The main character of this story is a poor woodcutter whose wife is greedy, controlling, and constantly nags him. One day, he decides to leave her, but she follows him and ends up falling in a well after not listening to her husband’s warnings. The woodcutter leaves her there overnight, but goes back to retrieve her the next day. However, instead of pulling his wife from the well, he unintentionally helps an imp escape.

            The imp is so grateful to be away from the shrewd woman that he offers the woodcutter a great opportunity: the imp will cause the Sultan’s daughter to fall ill and will only leave when the woodcutter comes to “heal” her. The plan works and the woodcutter is rewarded with the sultan’s daughter in marriage and rights to the kingdom. Then, the daughter of a neighboring sultan comes down with the same illness and the woodcutter is called upon to cure her. He goes to her and finds the imp is the cause of her illness. The imp refuses to leave the girl, but the woodcutter cleverly pretends that his shrewd wife in nearby. The imp runs away and the woodcutter continues to prosper on the basis of a lie.

            The Soothsayer contains a highly similar story. After witnessing the royal treatment of a soothsayer’s wife, the wife of the modest main character demands that her husband become a soothsayer. The man shares his problems with a friend, who enlists the help of a bathhouse woman. She steals the ring of the real soothsayer’s wife, buries it in the mud, and convinces the woman to ask the false soothsayer for help. He “sees” the location of the ring and is rewarded. Soon, the Sultana also loses her ring, and the false soothsayer is tasked with finding it on threat of death. Luckily for him, the stealer of the ring comes to him for help and they devise a plan to hide her identity while still revealing the ring’s whereabouts. Again, the deceptive man prospers.

            Both stories go against some motifs typically seen in stories, such as those relating to the value of honesty. Instead, they adopt a “fake it until you make it” mentality in which the deceiver thrives. Then again, these stories don’t provide any evidence that not everyone is actually doing the same thing!

(The Imp of the Well illustration by Willy Pogany 1913)