Synopsis by William Disbro, created from: In The Ever After by Allan Chinen, Chiron Publications, 1989.
The theme is wisdom and Chinen writes about five incredible pages explaining the symbolism in this tale.
The daughter's husband neglects everything as he searches for the secret to produce gold. Things are desperate when the daughter asks her father to speak to his son-in-law. The husband meets the father expecting to be severely chastised. The father confides that he too spent his youth searching for the secret, and at last he found it. In great excitement the son-in-law asks how it is done. You need two pounds of the silver dust found only on banana leaves but such an arduous task is now beyond me, the father said. Plans were immediately made to start growing banana trees. The father even gave some money to help purchase land and trees.
For two years the son-in-law toiled ceaselessly to plant more and more trees and gather the precious silver dust. At last he had the two pounds and he met with the father to find out how to convert to gold. The father asked his daughter what she had done with all the bananas and she said she had taken them to market each day. When asked what she did with the money from sales she replied that was the money they lived on. And asked if there was any extra she showed her father a small sack of gold coins. The father picked up a handful of dirt and held it out to his son-in-law and with the other hand held out the gold coins. From this to this, he said. And the son-in-law saw the wisdom of his efforts with the banana trees and resolved to work even harder to grow bananas.
Background to Reliquary series
Back to Small Box Reliquaries
Back to Gallery
|
