Week 4: Reading Diary: Twenty-Two Goblins

Twenty-Two Goblins, translated from Sanskrit by Arthur W. Ryder

Intro: I'd like to tell the story of the baby monkey who escaped—maybe his parents sent him out on a mission to better their lives, and he was so happy when he found the fruit—and then the jewel inside the fruit! But then it's taken away from him... so what does he do next? Go home empty-handed? Explore the palace and find something better? Break his parents out of the cage?

 

(I think I'll call him Jasper)

Three Lovers who Brought the Girl back to Life: "So they stayed there, all three of them day and night, feasting on the beauty of her face, like the birds that live on moonbeams." I love this simile! Partly...because I've never heard it before! When you read a comparison of two things you haven't read or heard a thousand times, you stop to think about it more, and the effect is stronger. Also, I love the imagery of birds living on moonbeams. It's so fantastical and magical; it puts the reader in a whole new world.

There's paragraph in the same story where a man becomes a monk, wandering, then staying at a Brahman's house. From here, the author says "the boy in the house," and "he," and I'm not sure if the writer is referring to the monk or a boy who already lived in the house... one thing to watch out for: confusing pronouns or descriptive nouns that apply to more than one person, like "boy."

I could tell the story of the little boy who won't stop crying and whose mother throws him into the fire (because his father can bring him back to life.) How irritating it would be to have your life taken from you, day after day, as if it were nothing, simply because your father is a magician. He could lament as the narrator and tell a story of how he gets back at his parents for taking his life so carelessly.

Twenty-Two Goblins: This story is a good example of why characters must have strong motives. The goblin says, "Tell the wrong answer and your head will split." So, naturally, the king wants to give the right answer. The goblin escapes and the king goes back to find him because he wants to do what the monk asked—because the monk has been doing him such a generous kindness for so long. If the characters didn't have a good reason for doing these things, the reader wouldn't care. We'd read it and think, "Why doesn't he just ditch the goblin?" But now we know why he's invested.