"Hello good sir, would you be kind enough to free me? I would owe you my life!" exclaimed the tiger.
"I hate to see any animal suffer! I shall let you out at once!" He hurried towards the beast. "My name is Jack, by the way." Said the man as he forced the gate open.
The tiger smiled and replied, "Jack sounds like a tasty name!' He jumped towards the man, but was knocked back. He lifted his head to see what had happened and noticed Jack holding a shotgun.
"I knew you were faking that nice act! I wanted to give you a shot to be good, but I am a hunter. Now I need to do my job properly." said Jack with a grin.
"Wait!" exclaimed the tiger, "Give me a chance to prove that I do not deserve to die! There is a village nearby, if I can bring you three people that will say I have a good heart, will you spare my life?"
Jack thought this proposition over for a few minutes. "You have until sundown to come through with your deal. If you hurt anyone or cannot provide three people, your life is mine." promised Jack.
The tiger ran towards the village. He was spotted by three young girls who started shouting and ran back towards their families. He tried to ask people to listen to him, but everyone was in a panic and just ran away from him. For hours the tiger wandered around the village before he realized no one would come back with him. With his head hung low, he returned to the Hunter.
"Everyone was afraid of me. They wouldn't give me the time of day to show them I meant no harm." said the tiger sadly.
"Well I have an alternative option for you, get back in the cage and I will leave." requested Jack.
The tiger looked at Jack, and without much of a choice, slowly walked into the cage.
"Maybe next time someone frees you, you will not try and eat them." said Jack.
Jack returned one week later to check on the tiger. The village people had brought him food as an apology for not listening to his story. Jack, once again, let the tiger out and now he lives happily amongst the villagers.
Author's Notes: Jacob's story included a man who freed the tiger and then had to make a deal to save his life. I reversed this situation in my version. I made changes to the ending of the original story and added the village setting. The tiger's character was the same, but the man's character was a bit different in my tale.
Bibliography: "The Tiger, The Brahman, and the Jackal" from Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs. Web Source.
Image Information: Lion Walking out of Woods. Web Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Hi there Jess!
ReplyDeleteMy name is Cat, and this is my first time visiting your blog. The original story was one of my favorites in the anthology this week, so I was excited to see that it was the basis of your story. I enjoyed the changes you made to the man’s character and thought that it made the story seem to have a lesson attached to it like an Aesop’s Fable.
As far as feedback goes I just have a few things. The first is that there is an extra word in your second sentence. The “him” at the end needs to be deleted. Next, I wanted to talk about the tone of your story. For the first four paragraphs you maintained a similar tone to the original, formal and what somewhat aged. At the end of the fourth paragraph though you switch into a more modern tone with the word “shotgun” which disrupts the flow of your story. This seems to happen again in paragraphs5, 9, and 12 with words and phrases like “faking,” “nice act,” and “time of day.” To keep your story flowing smoothly you might consider changing the tone of those sections to match the original one as well or changing the whole thing to have more of a modern tone.
Those were the things that stood out to me. I hope that this helped, and feel free to contact me if you want to talk about this further.
Hi Jess!
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you flipped the roles of the characters in your story from the original- it gave the tale a new feel, but it's still clearly recognizable as a retelling of the original story.
I think your writing style is, overall, very good. I know that one of the other students who commented disliked your use of modern words like "shotgun" and "time of day", but I actually quite liked it; the original story was rather ambiguous regarding the time period in which it's set, and, since this is a retelling anyway, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't use modern phrases. One thing I really liked was your dialogue. A lot of people write dialogue that sounds very unnatural, even wooden, particularly in their first drafts of stories, but your dialogue was very realistic. It could still be improved somewhat, as there are still a few bits that sound a bit odd, but it's overall very impressive (I would even say that it sounds better than some dialogue I've read in published books).
Hello Jess, I thought your story of "The Tiger, The Brahman, and the Jackal" was great! I actually read this story too a few weeks ago, so it was nice to refresh on it and also see a different view of it. I really like how you change the ending to the story because the other one was kind of boring with t juts ending with the tiger in the cage.
ReplyDeleteHello Jess,
ReplyDeleteI love the story. I love how you changed it to where the man makes the tiger leave and go prove his life id worth saving. I also like how you added the little tad bit at the end of the story where the man came back and freed the tiger for he showed humility and a lesson learned. I like stories with happy ending, though I don’t mind tragedy either.