One day a Brahman happened to be walking through the sultry jungles of India. While on his walk through the thick forage, he came upon a tiger stuck in deep hole. The tiger was in much distress and was crying out to the Brahman to help him out. Yet, the tiger's sharp teeth and fierce appearance caused the Brahman to hesitate. The Brahman stood in his tracks and pondered in his thoughts: "Why should I help this tiger? He's only going to attack me when I let him go." However, the tiger started crying, "Oh please please please let me go!". "I'll do anything anything!". The tiger kept on going for a quite a while, and the Brahman began to get annoyed. "Okay tiger, I'll get you out", the Brahman said grudgingly. Using a nearby stick, the Brahman pulled the tiger from its place deep in the Earth. The tiger landed on the ground with a loud thud and immediately grabbed the Brahman onto the ground. "How dumb you are! There is nothing stopping me from eating you!", yelled the tiger. The Brahman was fearful and begged loudly for mercy until the tiger came with a compromise. He told the Brahman to meet the first three things he see and ask what the tiger should do. Grateful, the Brahman left and met a wandering sheep. He quietly asked the sheep and asked it what the tiger should do. The sheep was taken aback. He yelled at the unjustness of people who take his wool for their own needs and how he receives nothing in return. Distraught, the Brahman quietly left and met an elephant grazing in a field. Again he asked the animal what the tiger should do regarding his own life. The elephant only moaned about the many trees he was forced to move by the people, leaving him tired and weakened. The Brahman now even more distraught went to a peacock admiring his image through a river. Yet, as the Brahman approached the peacock he saw his plumage had been altered. He also asked for the peacock's opinion on his terrible predicament. The peacock only sighed and lamented on how humans had taken away his fantastic feathers in return for nothing. Now the Brahman was on the brink of complete despair as he began to walk back to the tiger. However, while walking back, a fox noticed the downtrodden state of the Brahman and asked what had happened to cause such sadness. The Brahman quickly explained his situation, and the fox became confused. He did not understand the Brahman's story for some reason. Thus, they both decided to return to the tiger so that the fox could better grasp the situation. There the tiger was patiently waiting for his meal to return but was surprised by the sight of the fox. In order to elucidate the matter, the fox asked the tiger about what had happened earlier. The tiger, despite much hunger, obliged and explained the past events. Again, the fox was confused: "But how exactly did you get out of the hole?", he said. The tiger frustrated in having to wait for his meal then jumped into the hole to show the fox the earlier mess he was in. As the tiger asked if the fox had then understood, he heard no response. The Brahman and fox were long gone from the hole.
Author's Note: I changed the story to where the flow of the story was less reliant on dialogue, as was used often in the original story, and more dependent on character actions. Moreover, I included different animals for the Brahman to meet and substituted one cunning animal, the jackal, for another, the fox, in order to defeat the tiger. Additionally, the tiger was found to be in a deep hole rather than in a cave.
Author's Note: I changed the story to where the flow of the story was less reliant on dialogue, as was used often in the original story, and more dependent on character actions. Moreover, I included different animals for the Brahman to meet and substituted one cunning animal, the jackal, for another, the fox, in order to defeat the tiger. Additionally, the tiger was found to be in a deep hole rather than in a cave.
(Wikipedia: An Bengal fox commonly found in India and the savior of the Brahman in the story)
Bibliography: Story source: Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1912).
Hi Neal,
ReplyDeleteI also did a retelling of this same story. I admired how you took out a lot of the dialogue in order to rely more on the actions of the characters. I feel as though this made the story more real and easy to follow because perhaps sometimes too much dialogue can bog us down and have us confused on the whole storyline in the first place. I also liked how you changed the jackal to a fox; I feel as though foxes have a very cunning and mysterious stereotype to them in several different stories.
Hello Neal, I like the way you switched up this story, especially when you changed some of the dialogue to a more action based rhythm. There was a little confusion in your story but I honestly think that could be eradicated with a little extra revision. It always helps me to go back over my story and read it aloud to make sure I get rid of those errors. For example, when you say "He quietly asked the sheep and asked it what the tiger should do." In this sentence shouldn't he be asking the sheep what he himself should do in order to escape from the tiger? There were also some grammatical errors when you were quoting the characters. I find that Purdue OWL is a super helpful website for any writing techniques.
ReplyDeleteHello, I love the retelling of this story! At first, I thought immediately after the tiger got out of the hole he would attack, sort of like the story with the scorpion that rides on the back of another animal across a river and stings him. The moral of that story is, it is just the nature of the animal. In this story however I felt as though it was about being appreciative. I loved the way you retold it with different animals including the smart fox!
ReplyDeleteHi Neal! I think it was great that you excluded some of the dialogue and made the story less reliant on it. I also retold this story, but I kept the quantity of dialogue. It felt really heavy in my story and I wish I would have though to ditch some of it like you! Your story also puts into light how people treat animals and take so much for them. While foxes typically do not save us from a hungry tiger, animals do help us survive in other ways and they definitely shouldn't be taken for granite.
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