Many years ago, there was a lonely woman who lived in the woods. She had moved away from her family many years ago in order to find herself, hoping to find happiness in the solitude of the forest. Unfortunately, while she grew closer to nature over time, enjoying the more simple things in life, she longed for companionship. After years of living this way, a family moved in nearby. They seemed to be interesting people, so she decided to try to meet and befriend them. When she went to introduce herself, she was struck by their beauty. She began to desire to meet one of the men, Ray, almost immediately. After spending some time with him, Sara realized that he was engaged to the lady that was there. While Tina was beautiful, Sara did not believe that she and Ray were right for each other. She grew closer to him and they became friends quickly. Ray's brother Lane did not approve of the friendship, believing that Sara was trying to destroy Ray's engagement. This turned out to be true, but he did not want her to come over and visit them even before this came to light. Sara tried to befriend him, but he rebuffed her at every chance. One day before she came to visit, Ray and Tina had a very bad fight, calling the entire wedding into question. She thought he was cheating on her, while he believed she was only marrying him for his family money. Lane tried to mediate but eventually had to leave to get away from it all. Sara ended up listening to Ray vent about how little Tina seemed to actually care about being married, only wanting to talk about how fancy the wedding should be and how they had to have a lot of guests. He then began to speak about how he was glad she was there for him. Sara decided that it was as good a time as any to admit her feelings, so she did. Ray rejected her, stating that he was already in a relationship, even if he was having issues at the moment. What neither of the two knew, however, was that Lane had returned while they were talking and overheard the confession and subsequent rejection. He was outraged that Sara, who he felt had intruded in their lives, even dared to speak about feelings to his brother. In his anger he left the house and went for a walk, ending up by Sara's house. He saw her car and decided to key his feelings about her into it. When Sara returned home that night, already dejected from the rejection, she noticed that her car looked different. She ignored it for the moment and went to bed. When she woke up the next morning and saw what was on its side, it was the last straw. She called her big brother's friend Chris who lived nearby, crying about it. He was outraged and had her come stay with him while they waited for her brother to come and get her. When Raoul shows up, Sara tells him all about Ray and Tina, making him fall in lust with Tina due to the description given.
I decided to make the story appear more like a modern day drama, focusing on how Sara, or Surpanakha, really wanted a relationship and felt that Sita was bad for Rama. It shows how Surpanakha may have viewed Sita as more than competition. I also decided to change how Lakshmana reacts from him attacking and mutilating her to damaging her vehicle. I tried to show a modern twist while keeping key plot points consistent, such as Rama rejecting her and Lakshmana hating her. At the same time, I wanted to adapt the story so that Rama and Surpanankha had developed a friendship before she asked to marry him, rather than meeting him and deciding he would be a suitable husband.
Buck, William (1976). Ramayana: King Rama's Way.
This was so creative! I love when the stories from this class are adapted into modern day versions! You did a great job adapting the story, but still keeping the important plot points! I have to admit, I felt a little more sorry for Sara in your story than I ever did for Supanakha, perhaps because you had Ray and Sara develop a friendship first. I really enjoyed your story, great job!
ReplyDeleteI think you did a great job modernizing this story. My biggest issue, however, is that in the beginning I did not realize it was a modernization. The new names really threw me for a loop. I think introducing the main character as Sara in the beginning would really help the confusion. Also, just adding descriptions that tie the new names to the original characters would really help in differentiating between all the new names. Good job otherwise!
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job of retelling the story between Surpanakha, Rama and Sita. I liked how you retold it with a modern twist. It made the story much more relatable and enjoyable. I tried to do that we my last storybook and it proved to be much more difficult than retelling a story in the style that Buck or Narayan have used. One thing I thought I would mention was that I was a bit confused on who the characters were in your story until I read the authors note at the end. Maybe next time if you choose to tell a story with character names that we are not familiar with it would be beneficial to the reader if you introduced each of them some how so we could know what story you are telling! But you did a really great job, as I said before. Keep up the great work!
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ReplyDeleteI think you did a good job modernizing this particular story. You captured Surpanakha’s character within Sara – especially by showing that it was more about the competition than it was about actually getting to have Rama. I also like that you let Rama and Surpanakha get to know each other before she asks to marry him because it definitely modernizes the story, instead of her asking him based solely on his looks.