The demise of Pa Padir

Pa Padir is a Malaysian Trickster myth, a compilation of anecdotes about a man who repeatedly acts without thinking. He takes the least amount of information to complete a task and often finds himself in varying degrees of peril. A wonderful definition of the purpose of a Trickster Myth was written by Samuel M Wilson in "Natural History" in 1991:

Like most myths and folk tales, the trickster tales encode varying values and ideas, and some of these are specific to particular cultures. Yet the same themes are played out in strikingly similar ways throughout the world because the trickster tales deal with issues of universal human experience-family interactions, competition, struggles against authority, love, and death. The many sides to the trickster's personality make him especially useful to the storyteller: some tales emphasize the trickster's spiritual side and others his material side; some his role as creator and some as mean-spirited destroyer. The psychologist Carl Jung saw in the trickster a primordial figure who transcends humankind's conceptual boundaries between gods and mortals; who moves freely between the worlds of gods and humans and plays tricks on both.

I love this definition of a Trickster Myth because it clarifies that a trickster is usually immortal and bound to repeat his eccentricity again and again to show various examples of mistakes and misfortunes due to our actions.


The ultimate demise of Pa Padir comes in the final tale in which he and his wife go into the forest together to cut wood:

Pa Padir felt hungry so he told his wife to fry some bananas. She said:

"Go home and fetch me some live coals from the fire."

He quarreled about this, until she gave him some raw bananas. This finally persuaded him and he went to get fire from the house. When he came back she fried some bananas and gave them to him. Expecting these also to be raw, Pa Padir swallowed them whole. Soon he rolled with pain in his tummy and died. Ma Andeh buried him under the lesung (rice block or mortar). She died soon after.

Thus ends the tale of Pa Pandir who always acted without thinking.

Now it is not debatable that Daddy Moron (Pa Padir) died a less than heroic death. Rather his death closer resembles one which would earn him a Darwin Award here in the USA. A Darwin Award is an imaginary award given to someone after their demise, when it was their own foolishness that killed them. Pa Padir is a well named myth about a man whose death ends due to hot bananas. But, that is why this is a Trickster Myth and not a heroic myth. Though we did learn something from the demise of Pa Padir, to pay attention to what you are eating, and to listen to your wife a little closer.