The Three Wishes

When I first read "The Three Wishes" by Ricardo E. Alegria, I had a hard time figuring out the morals of his short stories. To me, the stories just seemed very random and pointless. Aesop's fables were succinct and had a clear point. Finding the moral was very easy in Aesop's fables. When I read Sara Lastrai's "Juan Bobo: A Folkloric Information System" the moral of the Juan Bobo story became very clear to me. Before I read Sara Lastrai's essay, I thought the moral of the story was about being a good son and paying attention. It then became clear to me that these stories aren't meant directly to the person, but more to express how the culture is about according to Sara Lastrai. So the Juan Bobo story is directed to the people that always get blamed. The story is talking about scapegoating and how it helps people feel more superior than you. Another story that represents the whole idea of scapegoating is "The Witches Skin". In the story, the witch didn't cause any harm to any of the people, but was still blamed for everything. The story is describing the witch as a horrible person, thus giving that perception that she is evil just because she is a witch. At the end, she dies a horrible event and it is celebrated by the people of the town. This just shows,  the whole idea of scapegoating. The witch and Bobo never caused any harm to the people as a whole, but the stories were describing them as the main problem of the society.