Inmythology and the study offolklore andreligion, atrickster is a character in a story (god,goddess, spirit,human oranthropomorphisation) who exhibits a great degree ofintellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and defy conventional behavior.
Tricksters, asarchetypal characters, appear in the myths of many different cultures.Lewis Hyde describes the trickster as a "boundary-crosser".[1] The trickster crosses and often breaks both physical and societal rules: Tricksters "violate principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis."[2]
Often, this bending and breaking of rules takes the form of tricks and thievery. Tricksters can becunning or foolish or both. The trickster openly questions, disrupts and mocks authority.[citation needed]
Many cultures have tales of the trickster, a crafty being who uses tricks to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. In some Greek mythsHermes plays the trickster. He is the patron of thieves and the inventor of lying, a gift he passed on toAutolycus, who in turn passed it on toOdysseus.[1] InSlavic folktales, the trickster and theculture hero are often combined.[citation needed]
Frequently the trickster figure exhibits gender and form variability. InNorse mythology the mischief-maker isLoki, who is also ashapeshifter. Loki also exhibits sex variability, in one case even becoming pregnant. According to "The Song of Hyndla" in ThePoetic Edda, Lokibecomes a mare who later gives birth to Odin's eight-legged horseSleipnir.[citation needed]
InAfrican-American folklore, a personified rabbit, known asBrer Rabbit, is the main trickster figure.[3] In West Africa (and thence into the Caribbean via the slave trade), the spider (seeAnansi) is often the trickster.[4] In southern African folklore aǀKaggen is often the trickster, usually taking the form of apraying mantis.[5][6]
Thetrickster is a term used for a non-performing "trick maker"; they may have many motives behind their intention but those motives are not largely in public view. They are internal to the character or person.
Theclown, on the other hand, is apersona of a performer who intentionally displays their actions in public for an audience.
While the trickster crosses various cultural traditions, there are significant differences between tricksters from different parts of the world:
Many native traditions heldclowns and tricksters as essential to any contact with thesacred. People could not pray until they had laughed, becauselaughter opens and frees from rigid preconception. Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacredceremonies for fear that they forget the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise. The trickster in most native traditions is essential to creation, to birth.[7]
Native American tricksters should not be confused with the European fictionalpicaro. One of the most important distinctions is that "we can see in the Native American trickster an openness to life's multiplicity and paradoxes largely missing in the modern Euro-American moral tradition".[8] In some stories, the Native American trickster is foolish; other times wise. He can be a hero in one tale and a villain in the next.
In many Native American and First Nations mythologies, theCoyote spirit (Southwestern United States) orRaven spirit (Pacific Northwest) stole fire from the gods (stars,moon, and/orsun). Both are usually seen as jokesters and pranksters. In Native American creation stories, when Coyote teaches humans how to catch salmon, he makes the first fish weir out of logs and branches.[1]
Wakdjunga inWinnebago mythology is an example of the trickster archetype.
Wisakedjak (Wìsakedjàk inAlgonquin, Wīsahkēcāhk(w) inCree and Wiisagejaak inOji-Cree) is a trickster figure inAlgonquin andChipewyan Storytelling.
The Coyote mythos is one of the most popular among western Native American cultures, especially amongindigenous peoples of California andthe Great Basin.
According toCrow (and other Plains) tradition, Old Man Coyote impersonates the Creator: "Old Man Coyote took up a handful of mud and out of it made people".[9] He also bestowed names on buffalo, deer, elk, antelopes, and bear. According to A. Hultkranz, the impersonation of Coyote as Creator is a result of a taboo, a mythic substitute to the religious notion of the Great Spirit whose name was too dangerous and/or sacred to use apart from at special ceremonies.[citation needed]
InChelan myths, Coyote belongs to the animal people but he is at the same time "a power just like the Creator, the head of all the creatures." while still being a subject of the Creator who can punish him or remove his powers.[10] In the Pacific Northwest tradition, Coyote is mostly mentioned as a messenger, or minor power.
As the culture hero, Coyote appears in various mythic traditions, but generally with the same magical powers of transformation, resurrection, and "medicine". He is engaged in changing the ways of rivers, creating new landscapes and getting sacred things for people. Of mention is the tradition of Coyote fighting against monsters. According to Wasco tradition, Coyote was the hero to fight and killThunderbird, the killer of people, but he could do that not because of his personal power, but due to the help of the Spirit Chief. In some stories,Multnomah Falls came to be by Coyote's efforts; in others, it is done by Raven.
More often than not Coyote is a trickster, but always different. In some stories, he is a noble trickster: "Coyote takes water from the Frog people... because it is not right that one people have all the water." In others, he is malicious: "Coyote determined to bring harm to Duck. He took Duck's wife and children, whom he treated badly."[citation needed]
In modern literature, the trickster survives as a character archetype, not necessarily supernatural or divine, sometimes no more than astock character.
Often, the trickster is distinct in a story by their acting as a sort of catalyst; their antics are the cause of other characters' discomfiture, but they are left untouched.Shakespeare'sPuck is an example of this.Another once-famous example was the characterFroggy the Gremlin on the early USA children's television show "Andy's Gang". A cigar-puffing puppet, Froggy induced the adult humans around him to engage in ridiculous and self-destructive hi-jinks.[12]
For example, many Europeanfairy tales have a king who wants to find the best groom for his daughter by ordering several trials. No brave and valiant prince or knight manages to win them, until a poor and simple peasant comes. With the help of his wits and cleverness, instead of fighting, they evade or fool monsters, villains and dangers in unorthodox ways. Against expectations, the most unlikely candidate passes the trials and receives the reward.[citation needed]
More modern and obvious examples of the trickster archetype includeBugs Bunny, theCheshire Cat from Lewis Caroll'sAlice's Adventures in Wonderland and Jerry fromTom and Jerry.[13]
When writing the screenplay forThe Curse of the Black Pearl,Ted Elliott andTerry Rossio envisionedJack Sparrow as a trickster, andHector Barbossa as his corruptfoil, though the characters can be viewed as both light and dark tricksters.[14]
In online environments, there has been a link between the trickster andInternet trolling. Some have said that a trickster is a type ofonline community character.[15][16]
Anthropologist James Cuffe has called the Chinese internet characterGrass Mud Horse (cǎonímǎ 草泥马) a trickster candidate because of its duplicity in meaning.[17] Cuffe argues the Grass Mud Horse serves to highlight the creative potential of the trickster archetype in communicating experiential understanding through symbolic narrative. The Grass Mud Horse relies on the interpretative capacity of storytelling in order to skirt internet censorship while simultaneously commenting on the experience of censorship in China. In this sense Cuffe proposes the Grass Mud Horse trickster as 'aheuristic cultural function to aid the perceiver to re-evaluate their own experiential understanding against that of their communities. By framing itself against and in spite of limits the trickster offers new coordinates by which one can reassess and judges one's own experiences.'[17]
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