The letter
read:
My dearest
Hariswami,
By the time you are reading this,
you will have realized I am no longer there. I have known about your affair for
a few months now. I was in denial about it which is why I continued to stay and
pretend as if I never found out anything. Until tonight, lying in bed next to
you, I realized that I just do not have the love and happiness I once had for you.
I know I deserve better than how you have treated me and gone behind my back.
Our relationship has been growing on lies and mistrust. I just cannot go
forward and live a happy life with you. I am leaving tonight to never return, please
do not go out looking for me.
-
Beautiful
“NO!!!!!”
Hariswami screamed out after reading the letter. The possibility of his wife
finding out about the affair never crossed his mind. Hariswami was at a loss for
words. He knew he loved his wife, Beautiful. He knew he only wanted to be with
her and wanted to apologize for what he had done. Hariswami decided to set
forth on a journey to find his wife and make things right with her.
As the letter stated “Please do not go
out looking for me”, Hariswami did not care, he went anyways. Hariswami
thought, “If I can complete this exhausting journey, this will prove my love
for Beautiful and she will take me back”. Hariswami was going to do whatever it
takes to find his wife. As he went out searching for her, he ran into a few
obstacles on the way.
The
first set back of the journey Hariswami experienced was car troubles. His car
ended up breaking down and he must complete the voyage on foot. He walked miles
and miles each day. Luckily, he had his credit card and could get a hotel room
each night to sleep and shower. One day, Hariswami went down for breakfast but
did not shut his door all the way. He came back to his room to see that his
wallet had been stolen. Now Hariswami has no car and no money but he continued the
journey. After sleeping outside and surviving on little to no food, Hariswami became
very exhausted. Yet, he continued the journey. One night, he came upon a house.
This house had big open windows, Hariswami could see the family was having a giant
feast. He had not eating a good meal in days, he immediately went to door and
begged for food. The family gave Hariswami a plate of food and he scarfed it
down. Little did he know, the family happened to be Beautiful’s cousins. Beautiful
had told them about the affair and that she had told Hariswami not to come
looking for her. The cousin realized the man at the door was Hariswami. While
she offered to give him food, the cousin added some poison to it before giving
it to him. She wanted Hariswami to pay for his consequences of having an affair
on her cousin, Beautiful. Later on that
night, Hariswami began to feel very ill. He knew something was wrong and that
he was going to die. He shouted out “I should have respected your wish, and had
not tried to look for you Beautiful”.
 |
| Affair |
Authors
Notes:
I
chose the story “Goblins:
The Snake's Poison” from the Twenty-Two Goblins unit. The story is how
Hariswami goes on a journey to find his wife who had been kidnapped. In the
journey, he gets poisoned by a snake and dies.
I used the same plot as the story but instead of the
wife being kidnapped, she chose to leave. I wanted to give the story a kind of
realistic feel since and chose for Hariswami to have an affair and for his wife
to find out and leave him. While the story does not have a happy ending, I
wanted the show that what’s done is done. Not all problems can be worked
through and sometimes you just have to accept your consequences. While I do not
necessarily think death is a suitable punishment for someone who had committed
an affair, I was just going along with the original story.
Bibliography:
Goblins: The Snakes Poison from Twenty-Two Goblins translated
by Arthur W. Ryder.
Geena,
ReplyDeleteI am not familiar with the original story of the Twenty-Two Goblins, but I enjoyed your story none the less. I like your storytelling style. Especially how you used the letter to deliver information to the reader and break up your story, stylistically and visually. Thanks so much for sharing, I look forward to reading more of your work.
Andrew
I really enjoyed your story! I think you did an awesome job with the description and dialogue. I am not familiar with the original story but I think your adaptation is very well written. Personally, I think he got what he deserved. The story also vaguely reminds of the Blake Shelton "Wouldn't Be Gone". Maybe if you paid more attention to what's going on with your love, she wouldn't leave.
ReplyDeleteThis is pretty good. I actually really liked the ending. I was, at first, kind of annoyed with the guy for looking for his wife when she specifically told him not to. I think, at least in the realm of fairytales where punishments tend to be really severe, he got what was coming to him. I will say I didn't expect that ending though. I hope Beautiful gets her a man who will treat her well.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your story! I agree with you that not all stories can have happy endings, but I think you could have kept the unhappy ending without killing Hariswami! But I for sure wasn't expecting him to die, so it was a really big surprise! The only critique I had was make sure that you are re-reading and editing your stories. I noticed that a couple sentences had multiple tenses in them. For example, "His car ended up breaking down and he must complete the voyage on foot." You used both past and future tense in this sentence. Other than that I think you did a great job and I can't wait to read the other stories you add to your portfolio.
ReplyDeleteHi Geena! A few weeks ago, I also did my reading over this story. It was a great story! I love what you did with it, too. Happy endings are done far too often and I like how you stuck with the unhappy ending. It gives a moral that sometimes you have to face the consequences of what you've done and not everything can be forgiven! I really enjoyed reading this, you did a great job!
ReplyDeleteGeena,
ReplyDeleteI did a story over the 22 Goblins unit as well, and thought it was a really interesting read, although some of the morals of the stories didn't make much sense to me, haha. Anyway, I really liked your story. I think you did a great job at bringing new life to an old story by adding some modern twists. I like how you chose to have the wife decide to leave, especially!
The only things I think you may considering changing in this story are mostly syntax related. For instance, in the paragraph after Beautiful's letter, you may consider leading with a different word, like "although", instead of "as". Also, I think you could chop that "s" off of "anyways" to make it "anyway". ( I don't think it's generally supposed to have an "s"?) The only other thing I noticed was that in your last paragraph you write that his car broke down, and that he "must" make the journey on foot. I think using a different word rather than "must" would read a lot better in this story, especially given the context. When I see "must" used this way, I think that has an implication of a future event. Because your story is told in past tense, using "was forced to" or even "had to" may sound better.
Overall I thought your story was excellent, though!
The poisoning part was very surprising. I did not see it coming. The way you changed the font to make it look like the letter let me know that it was the letter.
ReplyDeleteSince his voyage to find Beautiful, he was quite unlucky with his car breaking down and other events. I wonder if Hariswami tried to break it off with the girl he cheated with before leaving to find Beautiful.
Wow Geena, this story was definitely sad but I agree with your author's note. Too often in stories it seems like all can be forgiven and forgot. But in real life, you often make decisions that cannot be made up for or undone and you just have to live with the consequences. I like that you kept as close to the original story as possible while adding a little more of a realistic element. It definitely made more sense to have Beautiful purposely leave her husband than for her to get kidnapped, especially with the level of misfortune that fell upon him. The only thing I could say is I would have loved that have read some about what the mistress was like, who she was or how they met. It would be interesting to through her take into the mix. Did she know he was married? Did she ever find out he was killed? Would she even care? Just a thought!
ReplyDelete