In the short story "Anansi’s Riding Horse, A Jamaican Folktale" by Marian E. Barnes in the book Talk That Talk by Linda Gross and Marian E. Barnes the story describes Anansi saying that Brer Tiger was his riding horse and then embarrasses Brer Tiger in front of Linda. The main character in the story is Anansi and Brer Tiger; the antagonist is Anansi.
The character tricked in the story was Brer Tiger. Anansi tricked him by pretending that he was dyeing and when he went to tell Linda the truth Anansi would already be on Brer Tiger’s back because he is “supposedly” to weak to walk and then Anansi showed Linda that in fact Brer Tiger was his riding horse. Brer Tiger gets tricked in this story because he is always the one that gets starred at for being so handsome, muscular, brilliant, beautiful and so forth. Anansi was always the one that was made fun of or that no one ever cared about. But once Brer Tiger was tricked no one would then pay any attention to him and would be so embarrassed that he would not be seen. A lesson in the story would be that even though you are not paid attention too, does not mean that you have to go and embarrass, humiliate, or hurt someone just so you can get some attention.
The assigned trickster would be Anansi. Some traits that Anansi exhibits as being a trickster would be the type of lies that he makes up, a lie that he knows that they would not believe especially Brer Tiger. And a lie that makes the other lie the true. I think the value in reading trickster stories would be that it is okay to play jokes on someone once in a while but not a joke that would hurt a persons feelings or make them feel embarrassed that they can not be seen again.
