Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Poems and Songs

In many of the tales, characters break into verse or song, and these lyrics encapsulate and heighten the stories’ content and emotions. For example, in “The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies,” one of the sisters fetches a lute and sings several songs in which a woman pines for and chastises her absent love. The songs break up some of the long narrative text and add color and life to the tale. The songs must have been an effective interlude when the stories were told aloud, especially if the singing was accompanied by instruments. Since the narrative is so action-driven and mostly relates chronological facts, the songs are an opportunity for characters to express their deepest sentiments from their personal points of view. They express joy or grief, infatuation or disdain, fear or contentment. Sometimes, the translator has been able to reproduce rhyme, but their expressed priority is to retain the spirit of the original without forcing the lines to rhyme in translation. The translator does indent the poems and retain the line breaks, however, which distinguish the genre.

The Pattern of Three

The “rule of three” is a writing principle used widely in drama, comedy, and children’s literature. It is especially prevalent in narratives that were disseminated orally, such as the stories featured in The Arabian Nights. For example, in “The Story of the Fisherman and the Demon,” the fisherman pulls up three useless hauls from the sea before he encounters the demon. In “The Tale of the King’s Son and the She-Ghoul,” the girl who cooks the colorful fish must repeat her action three times before the king departs to solve the mystery. In “The Merchant and the Demon,” there are three dervishes, three songs, three sisters, three apples, and three old men who save the merchant. This repetitive numerical motif might have made oral stories easier for the storyteller to remember. It also creates a feeling of expectation and then closure in the listeners, audience, or readers. When whole actions are repeated three times, the pattern is satisfying and archetypal. The motif creates a kind of “beginning, middle, and end” sense of completion that has been part of literature since the earliest stories of all.

Decapitation and Amputation

Several characters in The Arabian Nights are victims of amputation, which does not result in death, or decapitation, which always does. One of the most dramatic examples is in “The Tale of the King’s Son and the She-Ghoul,” in which a king beheads a sage. If the king then opens a book of secrets and reads from a certain page, the severed head will answer all questions asked. In “The Story of Three Apples,” a jealous husband cuts off his wife’s head after a slave calls her his mistress.

In “The Tailor’s Tale: The Lame Young Man from Baghdad and the Barber,” no fewer than ten robbers are beheaded by an executioner, but the barber is spared. Later, in “The Tale of the Fifth Brother,” the barber’s glass-selling brother beheads a slave who has beaten him nearly to death. In a twist of fate, Nur al-Din Ali ibn-Khaqan is about to be beheaded by an executioner, but he is released and beheads the evil vizier instead. In “The Steward’s Tale,” the steward has his thumbs cut off by a new wife who curses him for eating curried ragout without washing his hands. In stories as dramatic and extreme as The Arabian Nights, it is not enough for characters to merely kill or punish those who have wronged them. Mutilation is often the punishment of choice.