Week 1 Indian Epics

     I actually had no clue what to expect in this class, although I did assume that I would be reading and doing so writing, as far as details go I had little. After completing the assignments I now feel that though my only goal in taking this class was to fulfill a requirement for an elective credit, that this class may end up being a hidden gem in my journey though school. I'm an English-writing track student, but so far most of what I have done in college is just read other people's versions of written work and then write papers analyzing those works. I took a poetry writing class, but that experience was horrible, and there was a creative writing class and though I did enjoy the class, there was a still a very rigid structure to what I wrote in the class that made me feel boxed in, and at the end of the class I felt the stories I created were not the stories I wanted to create. I get the general feeling in this class that while there is quite a bit of work to be done daily for a online class and the schedule is structured, the actual work however seems to allow for a students creative voice to be found.
     After watching the movie I was struck with how the four voices in the story all told their individual stories while at the same time still telling the same story. The three characters that narrators worked in concert to tell the story of Sita, but each one seemed to give different information. So in reality though they seemed to have different facts, they told three different stories, but at the same time told a fourth version of the story. A sort of pass it on type of storytelling that worked to allowed for a fluid story line that as a viewer gave me the feeling that if I heard them tell the story again, though the major facts would remain the same the story would be told in a different way. Best way I could put it is sitting on a bar stool listening to three friends talk. One of them says "Remember the time Johnny broke his leg" and another one replies "Oh yeah, that time when he jumped off the cliff" and the third says, "It wasn't a cliff it was a house", though the three friends disagree about the actual event, the major fact of the story that Johnny broke his leg is something they all agree on. To take this further, sitting on that same bar stool three years later and listening to those same friends talk about the incident the fact that Johnny broke his leg will remain the same but he details of the incident may have changed again. So the story becomes like a living being continually evolving. Taking it further later that night on a bar stool two people that overheard the story the three friends told may be sitting there retelling the story about Johnny breaking his leg only their version has him jumping off a skyscraper, so the story not evolves within the original storyteller's but it can also evolve through the people that heard the story and the retell it. The animation in the movie also work as fourth narrator to the story. While the three characters are telling the story the animation also works to tell their version of the story, thus creating a fifth version of the story within in the movie. Where as the three characters in the movie could represent the three friends talking about Johnny in the example, the animation could work like the two friends that overheard the story.
     So I think this class will work something like the movie. We as students read these stories and then we create our own version of the stories, and in turn our stories will be read by the teacher and other students and while the stories are being read, the teacher and other students will act as three friends on the bar stool placing their own version of stories along side ours (since we will have all read the same stories) and our story will instantly be rewritten and be evolved. The the hope is to write a story interesting and thought provoking enough for the teacher and student to retell our story to someone who will in turn find the story interesting enough to tell it to a friend creating a story that is never fully finished and is constantly evolving into another story. It is my hope in this class to be able to have a creative outlet in which I am able to express my versions of these stories in a way that is entertaining for those who read them.