Week 2 Story: The Eight-Headed Serpent
Susa-no-wo was traveling through the
forbidden mountains when he encountered an old man who had long gray beard. The
old man was with an older woman and a young woman. The man and the older woman
were both sobbing while young woman was trying to console them.
Susa-no-wo walked toward them and
said, "This is the first time I have ever seen others in this mountainous
area, humans normally cannot handle this environment. Are you all human?"
The old man stopped crying to say,
"I am the son of the Mountain-God. This is my wife and my daughter; my
daughter's name is Kushinada-hime.
Susa-no-wo said, "I am the
brother of Amaterasu the Goddess of the Sun, Heaven-descended ruler of Yamato.
It's nice to meet you. Sir, may I ask why you and your wife are crying?"
The old man replied, "My wife
and I are mourning the loss of our eight daughters who were murdered by the
serpent. Also, we fear the serpent will take Kushinada-hime from us next. She
is the only child we have left, and we don’t want to lose her.”
Susa-no-wo then said, "I am very
sorry to hear that. I think I can help you all and save your daughter's life,
if in return I can have her hand in marriage. Do we have a deal, sir?"
The old man said, "Yes, I accept
your offer. Please save our daughter!"
Susa-no-wo nodded his head toward the
old man. Then he looked into Kushinada-hime's eyes and grabbed her hands. As
they held hands Susa-no-wo counted to three, and after three seconds
Kushinada-hime was transformed. She was no longer a woman; she had been transformed
into the hair comb which lay in Susa-no-wo's hand. He looked at her parents as
he put the comb through his hair and said, "Having her with me will be
good luck. I will keep her safe." Then he ran off to slay the serpent.
He arranged a contraption with eight
entrances and at each entrance there was be a barrel of alcohol. When the
eight-headed serpent slithered up, it drunk every drop of alcohol from the
barrels. The serpent became hysterical before finally passing out for a nap.
Once the serpent was asleep, Susa-no-wo leapt from his hiding place and plunged
his sword into the serpent one-hundred times.
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He even discovered an old sword stuck
inside the serpent which was left from a previous warrior. He retrieved the
sword because he wanted to offer it as a gift to the God of the Heavens. Once
he was finished slaying the serpent, he took the comb from his hair and
retransformed Kushinada-hime so they could be married.
Story source: Romance
of Old Japan, Part I: Mythology and Legend by E. W. Champney and F. Champney
(1917).
The story here is told pretty solidly, and the addition of small details works really well - specifically, the parts about Kushinada-hime attempting to comfort her parents, and the dialogue in general. From what I remember of reading the original, most of the dialogue was simply summarized in the narration, so adding specifics adds some good detail to this story.
ReplyDeleteI think it could be interesting in the future for you to change up the story a little more. You have a solid sense of storytelling and managed to condense the story well, but it still felt somewhat similar to the original story's style of storytelling. The introduction of details that weren't present in the original are good, and based on your writing, I feel like you would be able to do well by focusing in more on the character interactions in the piece, possibly even summarizing or cutting out the 'action' all together.
(Feel free to respond to this comment if you want to discuss anything I suggested, I've turned notifications on so I should get an e-mail if you do.)
I really like this story. I think that the incorporation of dialogue is good and you have details that really fill out the scene. I think that you could probably expand your story and create more atmosphere surrounding the plot. detail some setting description, add more indications of what people are feeling through facial expressions and so on. I think that would really increase the punchiness and investment people have in your writing by framing.
ReplyDeleteI also re-wrote this story, and from what I can garner from what you wrote, your version is pretty similar to the original version. In the future, I think it would be helpful to make some differences apparent or introduce them at the beginning. It can be fun to have the same plot, so long as you interpret it through a different lens.
ReplyDeleteI really like your story. I have not read the original, but I enjoyed this one. I had a wow moment when Susa-no-wo turned the daughter into the comb. I thought this was very interesting and was not expecting that at all. I honestly laughed out loud when I read it. I wonder what the father and mother were thinking when he saw his daughter get turned into a hair comb. What if instead of turning her into a hair comb, you turned her into a sword or some sort of weapon. Or she could have been turned into armor for him to wear as he went to slay the serpent Then she could be used to slay the serpent and be just as big of a hero as Susa-no-wo was. Either way I think the story was great and I really enjoyed reading it. And I look forward to reading more of your stories as the class goes on.
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