The allegory, “The Blue Stones,” tells a simple story of a sea captain and his wife. A sea
captain names his ship after his wife and has a figurehead carved to look like her. On a
trading trip, the captain helps a king who rewards the captain with two blue gemstones. He
places the stones in the eyes of the figurehead. The wife complains that the captain should
have made the gemstones into earrings for her. Secretly the wife has the stones removed from
the figurehead, replacing them with blue glass.
When you paraphrase, you restate ideas from a text in your own words. A paraphrase may be a little shorter or about the same length as the original text, and should contain all the original source’s significant information.
