Tall tales are those in which everything, characters, geography, actions, and events are exaggerated. Carolyn S. Brown has done extensive research on the tall tale and her findings are published in her book
The Tall Tale in American Folklore and Literature
. Much of my knowledge of this genre has come from her. It is interesting that the storyteller of this type of story is exclusively white male. White females usually "participated in tall tale sessions as appreciative listeners or deliberate ignorers and scoffers" (p. 14).
"The records of early American tall tales are informal, often incidental. The earliest records are those of tourists and travelers who ran across yarning and tall-talking Americans along the way" (p. 14). Many of these stories were local and were repeated down through the years by talented yarnspinners. Eventually, they were recorded by the town and are now being recalled and collected by folklorists.
On p. 15, Brown quotes from Mody Boatright on the reasons why frontiersmen were such great yarn spinners:
he observed that the frontiersman lied in order to satirize his betters; he lied to cure others of the swell head; he lied in order to initiate the recruits to his way of life. He lied to amuse himself and his fellows. He was an artist and like all true artists his chief reward was in the exercise of art, however surcharged it might be with social or other significance.
The frontier was not the only place where tall tales were a form of entertainment and amusement. They could be heard in barrooms, beside campfires, on stagecoaches and steamboats, and definitely from the loafers bench in front of the general store. Often these were told by rural men whose timetable was governed by the sun and the seasons and left them time for leisurely tale telling. "The rural loafer, the western guide and the frontier farmer fit the stereotype of the tall tale narrator" (p. 32).
This tale is built on the tension that builds up between insider and outsider, old-timer and greenhorn. By exaggerating and making light of an episode, the storyteller attempts to salvage some dignity for the listener from the humiliation of being a newcomer. The storyteller aligns himself with the witnesses of the event.
The two stories which I have chosen to study for this unit are the ones found in the seventh grade textbook
Vistas;
they are about Pecos Bill of Texas and the Southwest and Paul Bunyan of the great forestlands in the northern states of the U.S. and parts of Canada. Both heroes are larger than life and perform extraordinary feats of strength or heroism at a very young age. These are recounted in the tale of a two-week old Pecos Bill taming a half-grown bear cub and of baby Paul Bunyan knocking down a mile of trees when he rolled over in his sleep. During the course of their lives they invent many useful items that help make life easier for them and for people in succeeding generations. One example of this is Pecos Bill's inventing a lasso from a rattlesnake in order to tame the rattlesnake and also to keep it from biting and poisoning him to death. Pecos Bill was very resourceful in solving his problems and many of the inventions now credited to him are accepted cowboy practices. Paul Bunyan, with the help of his blue ox, Babe, straightened out a crooked road by hitching Babe to it, who strained and grunted and pulled till he pulled the road straight!
Both the stories in the book are retold by Adrien Stoutenburg who makes use of a great deal of hyperbole, as do all tall tale spinners. Junior-high students relate easily to hyperbole, they recognize it as a medium which they frequently use when "cutting" on their classmates. The stories also draw a lot of pictures with words which the children understand and enjoy. The Teacher's Bibliography serves as an additional resource as it lists several collections of tall tales.
Suggested Activities
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1. Read each story on separate days.
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2. Use the activities in the the textbook which deal with vocabulary, comprehension, and writing skills.
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3. Discuss the two stories, eliciting from the students the elements they noted which the two stories had in common and,also, the differences. Have the students formulate reasons why some of the differences occur, e.g. the geography of each place.
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4. Have the students write some hyperbole of their own. Use their work to make a bulletin board display. If the students need some help getting started, you might want to start by giving them the beginning of a sentence and then having them finish it. The students usually take off on their own after this!
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5. Show videos of either or both stories and have the students look for and write down similarities and contrasts between the story which they read and the video which they watched. Discuss the reasons why some things stayed the same and why changes were made. Possible reasons are that stories change in the retelling, the need to keep the story within the video length of time, the attention span of the viewers, artistic license, etc.
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6. Produce a play using either of the stories of Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan. I am including a play written by Nellie McCaslin and published in the book
Tall Tales and Tall Men
in 1956. See the Appendix.
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7. Have the students write a radio play in which Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan are the main characters, swapping tales about their exploits and trying, in true tall tale fashion, to outdo each other.