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One day while traveling his sewer James herd someone’s footsteps grow closer and closer until they stopped just around the corner. The footsteps were small and steady. It had been twelve years since he had met someone and he was a bit scared! A plump little girl in a pink outfit appeared behind the corner. Upon seeing James she immediately pulled out her magical pepper spray and began to assault James with her weapon. With eyes burning James frightfully ran away from the monster that had entered his sewer. The plump little girl followed closely using her magnified death screams to pierce James’s ears.
James ran as fast as he could down the hollowed sewer lines, but blinded and deaf he tripped over a boulder and was killed instantly when he ran into the hard concrete wall. The little girl returned to the surface to be rewarded by the community for her defeat of the scary monster that lurked in the sewers.
Author’s Note:
This week I chose to write in a style of storytelling that allowed me to reverse the roles of the characters in the original story. I also chose to keep some characteristics from the original story that I thought would help connect the stories. My main goal for this story was to make the character roles reversed so the character they was perceived as evil or bad, would in reality be a genuinely good character, even though his appearance may suggest otherwise. The original story is about two princes that go into a forest and kill a witch. The brothers are then reward for their actions with magical weapons that they latter use to kill more witches. I changed the story by making the witch character “James” a morally good character and undeserving of death. However, the ending for both the witches and James were the same. For this storytelling post I chose to use the image posted with the original story I read. It not only depicts the actions of Rama, but it is also really well illustrated to the ‘bad’ witches. Even though my story is different from the original and reverses the rolls of the characters I think the image help illustrate that 'the other’ is almost always viewed in a negative light, usually without given a chance to show humanity.
Bibliography
Donald A. Mackenzie, Thataka, 1913.
Christian, this was such a clever idea. Have you ever seen the play Wicked by chance? The plot of that play takes all of the characters from the Wizard of Oz and tells the story in a different way that makes the good characters seem bad and bad characters seem good. I think this style of writing challenges the reader to think about their perceptions of people. Awesome story!
ReplyDeleteMost of the stories portray ugliness to bad or evil. Even in the Indian Epics we had to read- Hunchbacked women who was evil minded was ugly, the rakshasa was ugly. I like how you reverted the story and made James the “monster” the nice guy. I liked how you used pepper spray as the magic weapon. I really liked your story and message you were giving out through the story. In addition, “his face was scared by a lifetime of acne and his heart was scared by lifetime of sadness” was my favorite sentence in the entire story. However, the image you have used for the story was not exactly what I would picture with this story. I wanted to read more about the encounter of the girl and James. I wanted to know why the girl went to the sewer and attacked the “monster”. Since she is a little girl, I thought she would run away seeing James, however she didn’t! So, what motivated her to stay and follow James? I really enjoyed reading the story.
ReplyDeleteChristian, your ideas for reinventing this story from the Ramayana is absolutely inspirational! You did such a great job developing the character of James the sewer creature. I genuinely felt sad that poor James’ face was forever covered in acne and his heart was forever filled with sadness. From the very beginning of the story, you set the scene to be depressing and scary. I found it absolutely terrifying that he would stare at children out of the sewer drains while they ate their candy. Some things to think about are: what detail allowed the plump girl to want to follow James using her death screams? Also, how could you use the end of the story to compel the reader to feel more remorse for the death of James, the sewer creature? I feel like your story could be even more powerful if you had the audience wrapped up in both sides of the story! Great writing overall!
ReplyDeleteChristian, I very much enjoyed reading your story! From the beginning, I imagined James as a character similar to the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera – shamed from society due to his appearance and falsely judged about his character. Okay, maybe the phantom was a little bit violent… However, I was hoping that James would have a much happier fate than both the Phantom and his original, monstrous inspiration. You broke my heart with that plot twist in the best way!
ReplyDeleteI also liked the connotation you evoked by choosing the name “James” for the misunderstood character. I immediately associated him with James of the New Testament of the Christian bible who was also wrongly killed. Very elegant characterization and foreshadowing!