Zlateh the Goat

How does the singer record the changing moods of weather?

Chapter: Zlateh the goat

Writer: Isaacs Bashes Singer

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Last updated by jill d #170087
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The image of the boy and the goat living comfortably within a haystack while the snow falls all around them is a surreal one, and it gives the story a fairy-tale quality. Seen in cultural context, the story also contains elements of Jewish mysticism. Zlateh, for example, speaks simply with a goat's bleating sound, but in doing so manages to utter pearls of wisdom that Aaron somehow understands. She instructs Aaron to be patient and accepting of all of God's plans, even the trials and tribulations.

Another mystical element is the narrator's vivid descriptions of the natural world after the haystack, painting a picture of the moon's "silvery nets on the snow" and its position up above as if "it swam in the sky as in a sea." Descriptions of the beauty of the natural world evoke a spiritual quality, as if the world in that moment was "dreaming dreams of heavenly splendor."

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