Christian's Epic Blog

     My grandpa, brother and I flew to the Denver airport before renting a car and driving a couple hours through the mountains towards Aspen, Colorado.  We were traveling there to visit my sister and her fiance, who worked lived around the Aspen area.  The road to Aspen was winding, with many ups and downs and curls around the gorgeous, snow-capped mountains.  I remember eating a little too much beef jerky; by the time we were getting close to my sister's house I was feeling quite car sick.  Right as we pulled up, I hurled all over the rental car...oops.  Little did I know that this would not be the defining moment of this trip--this would only be the beginning of a rough 4th grade spring break.  I was super excited to snowboard with my siblings--my sister and her fiance were excellent snowboarders, though this trip would only be my second time on the slopes.  The day after we arrived and I tainted the rental car, we set out to go snowb...

     Indrajit looked around him, his eyes widening from the sheer brutality of what he was looking at.  His army of demons was being defeated, and on their home turf no less.  For the first time since his demon brethren began battling Rama and his army of monkeys, an unfamiliar feeling started to creep up deep from within Indrajit...fear.  Not only fear, but doubt as well.  How is this possible? My father was so sure of a one-sided victory...  the demon prince thought to himself.  An accomplished fighter in his own right, Indrajit had never lost a battle.  The confidence that Ravana had going into this epic fight was contagious to Indrajit; it would be impossible for them to lose.  But watching his demons get slaughtered mercilessly from a seemingly endless onslaught of monkeys is not what Indrajit expected in this war.  And Rama...he was as fearsome and powerful as the stories told.  He truly was a warrior of legend....

     This section of the Ramayana was probably the most surprising to me in terms of its plot.  I also found a couple of really neat characters that I enjoyed reading about.  One of the most important characters from this section of the Ramayana was Indrajit--Ravana's son.  For not hearing about him very much in the first several sections, he really drives the plot in Part D and turns out to be a worthy adversary to Rama and Lakshmana.  I was shocked to see Rama and Lakshmana essentially perish at the hands of Indrajit.  It seemed that many characters saw Indrajit turning invisible and attacking Rama's army as cowardly and deceitful, but I don't really know what they expected from Ravana's demon son.  And as the saying goes, all is fair in love and war.  Indrajit turned out to be very powerful, taking out Rama's forces to the point that they needed magic to recover.  The first time this happened, a really awesome new character named...

     For Part C of the reading, my favorite characters overall were Sampati and Hanuman.  I really enjoyed the character of Jatayu, so I especially enjoyed meeting his brother Sampati.  You can really see the character of Sampati from the manner in which he protected his brother and ultimately severely hurt his wings. I noticed another repetition from the Ramayana that also occurred in Sampati's story.  He was told that he would be able to fly again if he would be patient with his grounded condition, and would serve someone as noble as him.  Upon  helping Hanuman's team in their quest to locate Sita, Sampati states that he hopes Rama was the noble he was meant to help.  There have been several other characters throughout the Ramayana who were waiting upon Rama to help them in some way.  By every way of the phrase, he is a king of prophecy.  As it turns out, Sampati does in fact begin to heal after he aids in the quest.  My over...