Christian's Epic Blog

The chatty Mr. Turtle flew on a stick between two birds.  His inability to keep his mouth shut would be his downfall.   The turtle talked, fell, and perished.  Author's Note: The original story I drew inspiration from is called The Turtle Who Couldn't Stop Talking. In this story, a turtle befriends two wild geese.  The geese offer to take the turtle with them to their home, however it would be a long journey and in order to accompany the geese the turtle would have to bite a stick that the geese were holding the whole way.  The turtle agrees, and bites the stick to fly with the geese.  In the middle of the journey, the turtle tries to talk to a group of village children and then falls to his demise.  I liked the blunt nature of this story.  I tried a story lab this week, and I wanted to write a version of this story that was much shorter.  I decided to write a two-sentence micro-fiction.  I enjoyed being able to condense a Jat...

   The Wise and the Foolish Merchant tale seemed different from the other Jataka stories I've read--it was very thorough.  I like that the smart merchant was able to see past the trick of the demon unlike his foolish counterpart.  The clever characters in all of these stories always find a way to intellectually maneuver around their opposition.  In this case, the smart merchant was able to tell that the traveler he saw was a demon because he had no shadow.  I think this concept would be fun to carry over into one of my own stories.  The next tale that stuck out to me was The Princes and the Water Sprite.  The story sounded familiar to me at first, and I realized it reminded me of the Ramayana.  In the story, the queen wanted her youngest son to take the thrown over his older siblings.  She had been rewarded a boon and her wish was for her son, the Sun Prince, to be king.  The king didn't respond the same as the king from the Ramayan...

     The Merchant of Seri was one of my favorite tales from part A of this reading.  For some reason, it reminded me of the turtle and the hare story.  One of the characters is cocky, and talented in the case of the hare.  The other character is hardworking and more honest.  The greed of the greedy merchant was clearly incomprehensible! He could have gotten a surge of wealth from doing a simple trade for the bowl but instead wanted it for free.  In the end, hiding his true intentions cost the greedy merchant a great deal.  The other merchant had a good show of character, being honest about the true value of the bowl even when the grandmother didn't know its worth all these years.  I like this story because it has two very different characters, in the same job, juxtaposed to one another.  It turned out to be a happy ending for the honest character, and I appreciated that as well.  I can definitely see myself writing a story base...