The Spider's Thread
One morning the Buddha is walking beside the lotus pond of paradise when he parts the water with his eye and looks all the way down into the pit, where a robber named Kandata thrashes about with the other damned. Recalling that the man once stepped over a spider rather than crush it, he lowers a single thread of silk into the dark, and Kandata looks up, takes hold and starts to climb. Akutagawa's best-known piece for children, taken from Paul Carus's Karma.
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Attributes
Genre
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Mode / tone
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 60% · 9 shared
- 51% · 9 shared
- 44% · 8 shared
- 44% · 7 shared
- 44% · 7 shared
- 43% · 8 shared