The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan
Ravana asked his men to speak plainly about what they thought a good course of action would be to take care of Rama, and they did. Normally, with these kind of characters everyone is too afraid to say anything against them, but a few did and Ravana took it without bashing their skull. I think this makes him a bitter rounder of a character. He didn't really listen, but he also didn't overreact.
Vibishana's intentions are a little hard to follow. He seems to care for his brother, but after he gets told off, he goes over to Rama very quickly, and he seems to have lost all caring for his brother. It seems very sudden.
Ravana is demonstrated as being very two-faced at this point. He'll talk about fighting Rama not being worthy of him and then turn around and try to trick Sita in every way possible.
The battle between Rama and Ravana was very, very long for this version. There were a lot of interesting asthras, and I also thought the self powered chariots were pretty cool. The imagery of the crust of evil falling off of Ravana when he was killed by Rama was very deep, and I think it has a lot of interesting connections with Reincarnation. What happened to Ravana after this?
 |
| Rama kills Ravana Courtesy of Ramayana.com |
I think the story with Sita proving her herself for Rama is an good look at ancient indian culture. It doesn't seem to make any sense to me (or Narayan apparently), but it may have been much more the norm at the time.
And they lived happily ever after... (except in versions where they don't)
No comments:
Post a Comment