Thoughts About Comments

So far in the semester, I’ve gotten a lot of comments.  From my perspective, the comments on my storytelling posts have been particularly helpful.  More than anything, the comments that point of the highlights of my work and also point out what could be improved help a lot.  Those types of comments help me figure out what I’m doing right and help me keep moving in that direction.  I really like it whenever the comments get really specific as well.  If a comment is too broad, I can get the general sentiment, but I can’t really fix anything or I don’t know what to focus on.  These are all things that I try to keep in mind when writing my own comments for other people.  I try to pick out one or two things that really stick out to me and write about them.  To improve, I could be a little more specific.  

Essay: Twenty-Two Goblins

The story of the Twenty-Two Goblins operates on a very interesting plot twist.  The goblin, who originally seems to only be interested in causing the king mischief, is actually stalling the king in order to protect him.  Throughout the course of the story, the goblin seems to be the main source of conflict, especially within the frame story. In fact, it is through the constant trials that the goblin puts the king through that it becomes obvious that the king’s most prominent virtues are patience, determination, and perseverance. 

 The monk, who initially appears as a good person who is in need of the king’s help, is actually sending him on a quest to help the monk being a ruler.  It is not until the end of the story, when the goblin has told the king all of his riddle-like stories, that it is revealed the goblin is actually a force of good and the monk is a force for evil. 

Interestingly enough, the tales that the goblin uses as riddles seem to only further the virtues of the king in the frame story.  Though the king’s answer never seems satisfactory to the goblin, after each time the goblin returns to the tree the king still seems more and more virtuous than before.  Throughout the entire story, the goblin seems to be something of a trickster.  He often antagonizes the king, though it does nothing to break the king’s resolve.  To a reader, it becomes seemingly obvious that the goblin is the antagonist, or the “bad guy.”  In the end, however, the goblin reveals why he gives the king all those seemingly insignificant riddles and forces him to trek back to the tree in order to retrieve the body again.  It is because of the goblin’s cleverness that the king is able to defeat the monk and good wins.  It is the plot twist, that something that was perceived as bad was actually good, that makes the story.  

Twenty-Two Goblins

From the Twenty-Two Goblins unit of the UnTextbook

Storytelling: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Week 5)

Veta hanging in a tree by Harshad Dhavale.

I had barely been here more than a day or two before my body was disturbed.  As a spirit, I couldn’t physically feel it anymore, I could sense it.  I looked down from the heavens and watched as a man dressed in fine, ornate clothing struggled to climb back down the tree he was perched in.  Beneath the branches of the tree laid my body.  It was as crumpled as a pile of old laundry!  He must have just cut me down!  It was nearly shameful.

To add insult to injury, he threw me over his shoulder like it was nothing! Even worse than the man was the little goblin that decided to inhabit my body!  Didn’t he know that that belonged to someone?  Couldn’t they have just buried me like any respectable person would have?  Instead, they went on something of a journey.  The goblin talked incessantly.  How ridiculous.  It was rather strange watching the body that you identified as your own talking of its own accord.  Not only that, but he spoke only riddles!  At the end of each story, he would ask the man if he knew the correct answer.  The man seemed confident that he did know the answer several times.  He must have been wrong though, because each time he answered, the goblin would laugh and disappear back to the tree.  The finely dressed man would only shake his head and return to the tree.  He did this time and time again.

Watching the exchange became something of a game for me.  Each time I would guess how far the determined man would get before the goblin used his magic to return my body to its original position in the tree.  Each time the man would answer one of the goblins questions, poof!  I would be right back where I started, with the goblin still using me.  It was dreadful, but I had no choice but to become desensitized to it.  After all, there wasn’t much I could do about it from my place in the heavens. 

I couldn’t decide whether the man for determined or stupid.  Either way, he returned to the tree to cut me down and started back on his way.  I expected this to continue in an endless loop for the rest of eternity, but the goblin surprised me.  He told the man of some sort of monk.  This monk supposedly had planned on using the good, determined man as some sort of sacrifice and planned to become a ruler of some kind.  Not only that, but the goblin had used his magic and his riddles to delay the man (who actually was a king!) from returning to the monk and being killed.  Who knew that goblins had some good in them?  Then the goblin gave the king instructions on how to vanquish the wicked monk.  It was all very convoluted, especially for my tastes.

Finally though, the goblin left me then.  The king continued to carry me until we reached the monk’s lair.  I thought that the king would destroy the monk quickly, but that was not the case.  Instead, he allowed the monk to desecrate my body!  It was quite disrespectful, not to mention extremely perturbing!  Before I could truly process what had happened, the king had outsmarted the wicked monk and was being praised by all, including the stupid goblin!  Whatever, at least someone got something good out of the whole ordeal.  I supposed it didn’t matter too much.  After all, I was already dead.  I just wish the stupid goblin would have told the answers to a few of those riddles…

Bibliographic Information:

Twenty-Two Goblins, translated by Arthur W. Ryder, with illustrations by Perham W. Nahl (1917).

Author's Note: For my story, I used the tale of the Twenty-Two Goblins.  In the original, the reader sees more from the point of view of the king.  It also includes a lot more about the goblin and the monk.  Vishnu is also mentioned, though not as often as the others.  Each riddle is it's own section of the reading.  In my retelling, I chose to gloss over a lot of that and focus on the frame story or the main story.   I did this because I wanted to preserve the essence of the story.  I tweaked the story by creating a new character, the spirit of the man whose body the king has to bring to the monk.  When I first started writing, it seemed a little too heavy, so I tried to write it in a way that wasn't so dark.  In the end, I tried to use a little bit of humor and exaggeration to accomplish that.

Twenty-Two Goblins: Reading Diary B

The Girl and the Thief from the UnTextbook

• “The Brahman who died because Poison from a Snake in the Claws of a Hawk fell into a Dish of Foodgiven him by a Charitable Woman. Who is to blame for his death?”  That took me a second to wrap my head around
• What is the significance of the “swami” ending to a name
• “Nothing is impossible to the brave and determined man”  This seems to be the moral of the larger story.
• It is interesting that this story doesn’t revolve around getting a girl like most of the others do, though it does involve losing a girl
• Why did the king pretend to be a thief and then just leave?  Seems awfully anticlimactic
• “ He showed more than human valour.”  That seems like a rather odd thing for a thief to show
• “But the more he scolded, the more determined she became”  Determination
• When Shiva grants Pearl the boon, she makes relatively selfless wishes
• “he immediately slipped from the king's shoulder and escaped to his home. But the king was not discouraged” Persistent, isn’t he?
• Giving away your wife like that is rather creepy.  At least the king seems to understand that
• “No great man stops in the middle of the hardest undertaking.”
• All of the stories have multiple people that come together somehow.  Might be significant
• It seems like the stories are all interconnected.  I’m pretty sure that some of the names of people and places are repeated
• At first, it seemed like the magician was going to bring the boy back to life and be a hero.  Instead he basically stole his body and his old life
• “The king paid no attention to the terrible witch of night, clad in black darkness” where did the witch come from?
• Hmm.  It’s a tad odd that there are character’s whose names have the word lion in them considering the fact that every mention of lions up to this point has been negative
• So the goblin was actually helping the king?  Nice plot twist
• The king doesn’t seem too concerned about finding out the correct answer

Twenty-Two Goblins: Reading Diary A

The King and the Goblin from the UnTextbook

• The king seems to be awfully generous.
• Why does the goblin decide to tell the king a story
• “So they stayed there all three of them day and night, feasting on the beauty of her face”
• There seem to be a lot of stories with marriages as the central driving force
• Lots of mentions of the moon
• The names are really interesting.
• Spotless, the dad, is extremely comforting to his son, White
• ““People honour this goddess with all kinds of living sacrifices. Why should I not win her favour by sacrificing myself?" And he fetched a sword from a deserted inner room, cut off his own head, and let it fall on the floor.” Um, what?
• There seems to be a pattern of three
• The king is surprisingly devoted to bringing the goblin back
• “Discouragement never enters the brave heart of a resolute man.”
• This was the only tale that revolved around four people instead of three.  Interesting.
• The interest in the stars and the moon seem to be really significant, but I’m not sure why.  It seems to be associated with beauty and other good things though.
• “The very delicacy which is so great a virtue, is positively inconvenient”
• It seems like a running theme throughout all the stories that the values, virtues, or gifts actually become somewhat worthless in the grand scheme of things.