Famous Last Words Week 5

          This week has been very blah for me.  Nothing has really happened, except that every day I wake up more tired than I was the day before.  I wish I could get out of this funk of being tired and wanting to do absolutely nothing.  I have heard people say that an easy way to get more energy is to fake it at first.  They say that eventually, the real energy will come.  That sounds great, but every morning I am struggling to put on mascara, which is a big deal for me because otherwise I would have no eyelashes.

            As always, I would like to be more ahead in this class, but I’m happy where I am at the moment.  I’m a little anxious about the Projects.  I chose to do a Portfolio and I’m happy with my choice but I’m just anxious to see other people’s projects and their reactions to my own.  I think the first week of projects went ok.  I didn’t receive too much negative feedback and overall, I was pleased with what was said. 

            Something interesting that I did in another class was that I got to watch the film New Jack City.  The film is about a cocaine dealer within Harlem destroying his own community through the selling of drugs.  I like the film because it truly doesn’t glamorize drug culture.  Instead, it shows a man who tears down his community through selling cocaine, killing all of those who oppose, even his best friend since childhood, and essentially becoming a drug lord who controls the community.  The one thing that I found interesting about the film was how he bought the community off.  At one point in the film, the drug lord gives food to the entire community and at another time he buys off the local reverend by giving his daughter her dream wedding.  However, his true colors are eventually shown because later on in the wedding scene he uses a flower girl as a human shield during a shoot out.  I found this film to be interesting and I wonder why it is not as remembered as other films from the 90s.  

Wesley Snipes plays the drug lord within the film New Jack City.  Source: Wikimedia

Storytelling Week 5: The Valakhilyas' Plea

They come during the night in great hordes devouring any creature in their path.  They have destroyed us in so many ways.  We cannot go out anymore.  We are truly prisoners within our own forest, our own home.  The Rakshasas have taken everything away from us by destroying our safety. 

            They are horrible beasts who come in all forms.  Some stand taller than the trees of the forest with hands and feet that destroy any life.  Others crawl and slide on their stomachs, slurping up any creature on the ground with long tongues that have viscous spikes attached to them.  Some can even fly, picking up small animals by their necks and quickly crushing them.  But the most dangerous Rakshasas are the fast ones.  They can sprint on all fours or just two legs.  They have hands with a large claw used for gripping, tearing, and killing.  There are also Rakshasas with large red eyes, tiny black eyes, and some who have no eyes, only black pits that give no hint of a soul.  However, all of the monstrous Rakshasas that inhabit our forest have an unquenchable blood lust.  They stop at nothing.  They have no boundaries.  They only care about feeding on weaker creatures like us and they are never satisfied. 

            The things they do to creatures...terrible things that cannot be imagined by a sane mind.  We have witnessed our own being skinned alive without hesitation from the Rakshasas.  At first, they were fast deaths followed by fast consumption, only leaving piles of bones.  But they became hungry for suffering.  They tortured our people, played with them before feasting.  Now, they skin their victims alive slowly, tearing inches of skin off one piece at a time.  The screams are something that no one has ever heard before.  We are not sure if they are the screams of the poor creature who is dying or the Rakshasa.   They are agonizing and painful to hear.  None of us can forget those horrific sounds and some of us hear these screams in our sleep.  We cannot imagine how the Valakhilya who is dying must feel, and we never want to. 

            During the day, when we scavenge for food, we find bones, so many bones.  They are stripped of flesh.  Some are even hollow as if the Rakshasas have sipped the marrow from every bone.  You cannot imagine how many piles of bones we find.  We find small bones from our own kind and larger bones from humans, birds, deer, bears, and tigers.  Some piles have smaller Rakshasas within them.  How can such ruthless creatures who lust for death and blood even from one of their own exist.  If they can kill their own, they will surely destroy every trace of us, the small and innocent Valakhilya. 

            Rama, we are scared, terrified.  The life we live now is hopeless and meaningless because we know that a cruel and torturous existence is all that is left.  Please, Rama!  You cannot deny us our safety, our lives.  If you do not help us, we will die either from the Rakshasas or from our hopelessness.  

A Rakshasa depicted in the art of Yakshagana.  Source:Wikipedia.

Author’s Note

For this week, I wanted to retell the Valakhilyas’ plea to Rama.  Rama meets the Valakhilyas, who are tiny sages, in the Dandaka forest after his exile.  Within Buck’s version of the Ramayana, I found his use of detail and description of the Rakshasas from the perspective of Valakhilyas very intriguing.  However, I wished that there would have been more detail on what the Rakshasas did to the Valakhilyas and other beings within the forest.  For these reasons, I wanted to expand this detail in order to show how horrific these creatures really are.  I mainly did this by giving more detail and description of the type of destruction and fear the Valakhilyas have to deal with.  Overall, I wanted to expand this section of the Ramayana.  I didn’t include the dialogue from Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita because that was not what I wanted to focus on.  Instead, I just wanted to convey the type of distress that the Valakhilyas have to endure.  Essentially, I wanted to make it thematic, descriptive, and highly detailed.  At times, I did struggle because I didn’t want to sound too redundant.  I don’t believe that I was, but if you feel like some parts are redundant please tell me.  This retelling of the Valakhilyas’ plea is true to plot. 

Bibliography

Buck, William (1976). Ramayana: King Rama's Way. 

Reading Diary B Week 5: Sita's Imprisonment in Lanka

            The part of this reading section that most struck me was Sita’s capture within Lanka.  While in Lanka, Sita has conversations with both Ravana and Indra.  Through her conversation with Ravana, the audience is shown multiple views of women.  For one, it explains how easily women are seen as property through rape.  Another thing that the audience sees is how fickle minded women are perceived to be.  For example, Ravana tells his demon servants to threaten her softly, use strong words, tell blatant flattery about Ravana, and give her everything she asks for and more.  Ravana believes that by doing this he can sway her to “love” him and sleep with him willingly.  Of course, as the story goes on, the audience understands that Ravana can no longer rape any more women due to a curse.  However, Indra gives us a back-story that explains that Ravana’s curse is due to him raping multiple women and raping one whose husband cursed him. 

            While this section does portray some negative views of women, it does give some positive views.  Through Ravana’s harsh curse, which states that once he rapes another woman all of his ten heads will explode, the Ramayana is stating that the rape of women is wrong.  Possibly by suggesting that all of his heads will explode not only infers that all rapists should be punished harshly, but also that rapists are mentally messed up.  Of course, I am an English major and we overanalyze everything.  While this passage has those redeeming qualities, I feel that at the end Indra’s statement, “‘I think women are more cruel than demons.  Very often they are,’” completely retracts those qualities and paints women in a bad light (Buck 180).  

Ravana and Sita. Source: Wikimedia

Reading Diary A Week 5: The Valakhilya

            Something that I found interesting about this reading section was the Valakhilyas.  While I really didn’t find the Valakhilyas interesting, I did find their descriptions about the demons and their actions intriguing.  The language that Buck used really struck me.  I thought it was beautiful and fascinating.  While I often find that too much descriptive imagery takes away from the plot or action within the scene, I found these descriptions to add to the action and keep me intrigued through this section of the story. 

Some of my favorite descriptions are:

“‘Rakshasas prowl for flesh by night.  They overshadow the darkness as though they would crush the mountains down.  We must endure demons and submit to them.  We have seen mountains of bones from the victims they have slaughtered, white bones, Rama, white bones...,’” (Buck 143).

“‘We hide from the Rakshasas of Lanka walking abroad through Dandaka, in form like hideous charred corpses from some cremation ground,’” (Buck 144).

            These descriptions of the Rakshasas from the Valakhilya are very disturbing.  By saying that they create mountains of white bones, Buck is inferring that they are killing so many of the Valakhilyas and other creatures that their bones create mountains.  Furthermore, the fact the bones are described as being white says that the Rakshasas have cleaned the bones so thoroughly by eating that they have turned white.  Another thing that I liked about this section was that Sita had a voice and actually stood up to Rama about starting a war.  However, Rama and Lakshmana quickly correct her thinking. 

Rakshasa.  Source: Wikipedia