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Understanding the Tale of “the Tiger and the Persimmon” as a Story of Nature vs. Culture

Yun jeong Hwang 1

1서강대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Based on the cultural nature of food, this paper attempts to understand the "Tiger and the Persimmon" tale as a battle between nature and culture dressed up as an funny story. 'Raw' and 'cooked' represent the opposition between nature and culture. In this context, 'food' means the confrontation between nature and culture, depending on the recipe, and has the potential to speak of the dominance of culture. In the story the persimmon is a 'food' that is culturally processed from natural ingredients, and if we see the relationship between the 'tiger' and the 'persimmon' as the relationship between 'nature' and 'culture,' we can read it as a story about the confrontation between nature and culture and human wisdom. In the story of "The Tiger and the Persimmon," the tiger, which is trying to eat humans, is placed in the category of "nature" that threatens humans and is opposed to humans. The persimmon, which is a product of culture, chases away the tiger that invades the human territory, and the persimmon is replaced by the thief. The cultural attributes of the persimmon are passed on to the thief, who defeats the terror of nature in a wise way. The unexpectedness of the tale of 'dried persimmon stronger than a tiger' provokes laughter, but it also subverts the long-standing relationship of power and weakness between tigers and humans, and makes the idea of 'humans stronger than tigers' plausible. So while the tale has the veneer of a funny story, it's really a story about human culture's struggle with nature, which has always had the upper hand.

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