Reading Notes A&B: Beowulf

Reading Notes A:

I decided to throw the notes together because I plan on predominently talking about the second half of the Beowulf Story. Though the first half is good and important, the second half is where most of the action happens and is the easiest to write about and change.

Reading Notes B:

Change the description of Grendel, make it to where the people of Herot have been haunted by Grendel for 12 years but no one has ever seen him because he would cast deep sleeping spells on people. Make it more of a myth and a curse, but Grendel is a puny creature that would be defenseless if his spells didnt work. But when Beowulf either kills Grendel/sends him back to his mom, she gets pissed and starts doing some big attacks. Grendel the giant, Grendel the terrible, the scurge of the night- some of the myths they say about grendel. When Beowulf cuts off the hand of Grendel, the spell stops and the townspeople see Grendel for what he really is and arent scared anymore till his mother comes back.  Grendel only kills because hes scared of his mom, mom is scared of the dragon who needs gold. Beowulf becomes king for killing grendel and his mom, the dragon comes to get his revenge on Beowulf. The dragon was Smaug on steroids, compare to how to train your dragon. Get ideas from movie too.



Beowulf, Grendel, and Grendels mother



Beowulf vs. the dragon

Storytelling: The Wolf man and his Two Wives

A long time ago there was a man named Guillermo who had two wives. Though they were married, Guillermo’s wives did not love him, or even like him for that matter. They had all wed through an arranged marriage, to which the wives were very displeased with. Because of their displeasure they were not good wives to Guillermo. He would be out hunting all day and when he would return nothing would be done around the house. No food made, no cleaning had been done, and no wives in sight. They were much younger than Guillermo, so they would always be out partying and having relations while Guillermo did all the work. When the wives did finally return home they would always get chewed out by Guillermo. This became such a regular thing that Guillermo decided the only way to teach his wives to be good was to move away from the big village, where they would all be alone. So he packed up everything and moved them off on the prairie and camped at the foot of a high butte.

Every evening about sundown the man used to climb up to the top of this butte and sit there and look all over the country to see where the buffalo were feeding and and wonder if his wives would ever be good to him. On top of the hill there was a buffalo skull, on which he used to sit.

One day one of the women said to the other, "It is very lonely here; we have no one to talk with or to visit."

"Let us kill our husband," said the other; "then we can go back to our relations and have a good time."

Early next morning the man set out to hunt and, as soon as he was out of sight, his wives went up on top of the butte where he used to sit. There they dug a deep hole and covered it over with light sticks and grass and dirt, so that it looked like the other soil near by, and placed the buffalo skull on the sticks which covered the hole.

The wives waited and watched for Guillermo to return, and finally they saw him coming over the hill carrying all the meat he had killed. Guillermo came home, dropped off the meat, and climbed up his butte to sit on the buffalo skull like he had always done. But this time when he went to go sit on the buffalo skull, the sticks broke and he fell into a hole. Once Guillermo had fallen in the hole, the wives packed up all their belongings and made their way to the big camp, crying and mourning over the death of Guillermo. They told the people of the village that he had been gone for days on a hunting trip and that he had not returned, so they assumed that he was dead.

Now Guillermo didn’t actually die, but was stuck in the pit and was in an unbearable amount of pain. Guillermo thought that he would surely die here. A pack of wolves was hunting nearby and saw Guillermo stuck in the pit. Guillermo assumed that they would just eat him, but to his surprise the wolves pulled him out of the pit and brought him to their den. They brought him to the leader of the pack that had special healing powers and he brought Guillermo back to full health. On top of healing him the pack leader turned Guillermo’s head and hands to that of a wolf, but left the rest of his body unchanged.

Guillermo joined the pack helped the wolves steal meat from the big camp. The wolves normally couldn’t get near the meat because of the villager’s traps, but with Guillermo, the man wolf, they could get to the meat easily. The villagers discovered that the traps kept getting pulled and knew they must put a stop to whatever it was. That night Guillermo and the wolves set out like usual to steal meat, and like always Guillermo went first to unhook all the traps. But this time while he was unhooking the traps, the villagers jumped out and surrounded him. They caught him with ropes and brought him to the light of the fire, and at once they knew who it was.

“Guillermo it is you, we thought you had died?” said the villagers. Guillermo explained to the villagers what his wives had done and how the wolves had saved him. This made the villagers angry and they knew that the wives would need to be punished. Rather than killing the wives, the villagers sentenced them to exile to where they would have to live the remainder of their days alone, fending for themselves. The wives were never heard from again.

The wolf man

Bibligography: The Wolf Man- Blackfoot Storybook, Grinnell

Author's Note: I actually made my story pretty close to the original. Some of the things that I changed was about why the wives tried to kill the man, because in the story they didnt elaborate on it very well. I also changed the punishment that the wives had for trying to kill the man, because in the original it doesnt really specify. Also as you already noticed from reading I named the main character Guillermo because he didnt have a name before. 

Reading Notes B: Blackfoot

The main stories that I enjoyed from this were the Kut-O-Yis stories. Kutoyis was a man that was born from the blood of the buffalo, that later turned out to be a great hero. Kutoyis fought many monsters and this stories basically is the native american version of the Odyssey. Although I enjoyed this epic a lot, I'm going to focus my storytelling on the "Wolf Man" for this week. 

Kut-O-Yis

Reading A: Blackfoot

The main story that I focused on from this section of readings was the "Wolf Man." The wives reasons for trying to kill the husband don't make a lot of sense so Im going to try to change that. They wanted to be free from the husband so that they could live there lives how they want, maybe arranged marriage got them together in the first place. Different way of trying to kill him, and come up with an actual punishment for the wives at the end.


The wolf man

Storytelling: The Rise and Fall of Unnatural Uncle

In a village there lived a man known by his neighbors as the “Unnatural Uncle.” Unnatural Uncle was the chief of the village, though he was not the rightful heir. He was in fact the brother of the true heir, who had died in battle against the white man. This left Unnatural Uncle as the chief. Over the years he had grown very fond of his chief position and the people of the village seemed to be fine with him being in charge. Unnatural Uncle was a very precautious chief though, he worried that one day one of the woman in the village would give birth to a son that would overthrow him. Because he was so worried, Unnatural Uncle would secretly poison every newborn child that made it to age five. If they were a girl however, he would let them be for he saw no harm in letting a girl live.

So far Unnatural Uncle had killed four boys. No one knew for sure that Unnatural Uncle was the one doing the killing, but the people of the village were starting to have suspicions. Especially Unnatural Uncle’s wife who was the village doctor. The wife then went to the woman in the village that was next to have a child and told her that if she had a son to disguise him as a girl. So the child was born and like always Unnatural Uncle had his wife go and check the gender of the child, but this time the wife lied and told Unnatural Uncle that the child was a girl not a boy. So Unnatural Uncle let the supposed girl live. The mother and Unnatural Uncle’s wife told the newborn boy that he must act and dress as a girl when he grew up in fear of the Unnatural Uncles wrath.

Unnatural Uncle observed the “girl” as she was growing up, often wondering about his boyish looks, but never having concrete evidence to suggest that he was a boy. One day however, the boy was out in the fields not knowing that Unnatural Uncle was watching and lifted up his dress to use the facilities revealing his boyish body. "Ah," said Unnatural Uncle to his wife, on reaching home, "this is the way you have fooled me. But I know everything now. “Go and tell that boy to come see me.” The wife replied “You had better not hurt that boy, you have already killed so many others. If you harm him harm will come to you.” Unnatural Uncle foolishly ignored his wife’s warnings and proceeded to meet the boy outside.

The boy was frightened, but knew that he had to find a way to put a stop to Unnatural Uncles ways. Unnatural Uncle approached the boy, and told him that they were going to go on a walk to gather wood. The boy naturally did as the uncle commanded and so they started walking. Unnatural Uncle led the boy down quite a ways until they were near a roaring river, he then told the boy to go and fetch logs down there for him because he was too old to get to them. As the boy went and started grabbing the logs, Unnatural Uncle snuck up behind him and pushed him into the fast flowing river, presumably leaving him for dead. Unnatural Uncle walked home to inform his wife that the boy was dead.

As he was about to walk into his home he was met by a mob of angry villagers, led by his own wife and the boy. They boy had survived through the rapids and quickly run to tell the wife and the rest of the village what had just happened to him. He rounded up the other men of the village to confront Unnatural Uncle of his crimes, and here they all were. The villagers arrested Unnatural Uncle and ultimately gave him the death penalty for his crimes. The boy went on to become the new chief of the village, for showing so much courage to stand up to Unnatural Uncle.

Authors note: For this story I stayed pretty true to the original story of Jealous Uncle from the Hero Tales story set. What I focused on more though is a background of why Unnatural Uncle started killing the boys. Also in the original story the uncle tried to kill the boy multiple times until the boy himself finally defeated the uncle, so I changed that up a bit but most of it is the same. I included an image of the Titan lord Cronus who in greek mythology ate his children the olympians when they were born so that they would not rise up against him. His wife Rhea however tricked him into eating a rock instead of the olympian Zeus, Zeus late overthrew Cronus and freed his siblings. Reading this story made me think a lot about Cronus and his story. 

Cronus eating the Olympians

Reading notes B: Hero Tales

I mainly focused on the story of the jealous father for this reading. This reading reminded me a lot of the movie the Mummy. Because the pharaohs right hand man Imhotep has relations with the pharaohs wife and the pharaoh figures this out because he notices marks on her hand that must be from him. Imhotep then kills the pharaoh and flees but the pharaohs guards basically make it their duty to track down Imhotep and make his life miserable. And all Imhotep is trying to do is get back to is the pharaohs wife which hes in love with. So a lot of similarities in this and I think I could write about this fairly well but I think im going to stick with writing about the story i focused on before which was the "jealous nephew."



Imhotep

Reading Notes A: Hero Tales

I predominantly focused on the story of the jealous uncle. This story reminded me a lot of the book series Series of Unfortunate Events. A evil relative constantly trying to make a childs life miserable for a selfish reason. I think I want to focus on why the Uncle wants to kill every boy that is born, and what caused him to act like this. I will more than likely keep a lot of the traps the same but put them in better words so its easier to understand. I do really like this story thought, I feel like there are many things I can change to make it better but I like the premise of it.



Count Olaf

Tech Tip Poster

What is your deepest fear?

Week 8 Growth Mindset

I think some of the things I can work on in this class is using different writing styles, I typically just sit down and write and put a lot of creativity in the writing itself, but I never really change my writing style at all. Reading through the list I found myself applying half of the right and left statements to my life. But I think I can use this class to branch out In my writing skills and then transfer that into other things in my life. Some of these things include taking criticism better, taking more risks in different aspects, being a perfectionist, etc.

What is your deepest fear?