Week 6: Reading Diary B || Fight in Lanka

This week I did not make the deadline to post a reading diary for part A and I do not have a long period of time to invest in my reading diary part B, so it is going to be a bit shorter than usual!

As I read the assigned pages for today, I couldn’t help but notice that there was a completely different vibe and inconsistancies between Buck’s telling of this story and Narayan’s. Although it is arguably more realistic, I did not enjoy Buck’s retelling as much as I did Narayan’s.

I felt sorry for a lot of the characters throughout this part. I really did not enjoy how the squirrels were depicted to be such small creatures in comparison to Hanuman while they built the bridge to Lanka. Hanuman is only a monkey, why is he and his race envisioned as such large creatures and the squirrel race isn’t?

As with Narayan’s version, when Rama became mad at the ocean and cursed it, it surprised me. I also became curious as to the extent of his cursing abilities. We saw him curse the person who scared Sita earlier in the story. I do not understand why he does not use this ability to curse people and things more often in his experience in the woods. Is it because he does not want to hurt people or influence them to do things and make decisions based on what they do not believe? Maybe it is because he already knows or at least has noticed that he has the gods on his side? Whatever the reason, it seems like a rather good moment to utilize this ability to cross the ocean. Sounds like a familiar story?  

Another thing I found strange was the description of the interaction between Ravana’s cronies and their attempt to spy on Rama and his followers. They all failed in their attempts and I guess I was just surprised that Ravana would subject these people, who are clearly not intelligent, witty, or creative, to perform a very crucial task in attacking their enemy- discovering their plan! Maybe Ravana just utilizes these people because he has no one else and all of them are pretty much forced to follow him anyways?

I was really upset when I read about Ramas death. After reading Narayan’s version, and observing a different type of storytelling but with most of the same plot lines, I thought that everything would end up the same in Buck’s version. What does the death of Rama mean for Vishnu?