Week 6 Reading Notes: Ryder's Panchatantra, Part B

From the story of Right-Mind and Wrong-Mind, I like the idea of using very obvious "names" that give you a hint to what the story will be about. It makes it easier to follow and understand where the story will be taking you.

The story of The Foolish Friend did a good job of setting up the background of the story concisely. I found myself wanting to trust the monkey because of the way he was written and was taken aback when I read about him accidentally killing the king. It was really clever (albeit sad) to show his stupidity at trying to kill a bee and ending up killing the king. It is written with enough thought that you see how the monkey could have done what he did:

But when the bee, for all his efforts, continued to approach the king, the monkey went blind with rage, drew his sword, and fetched a blow at the bee a blow that split the king's head.

It mentions that his anger was building and eventually he was so enraged at the bee that he had to kill it and that's where his focus went. I much prefer this writing to a style that would just immediately have the monkey kill the bee. It's not really showing stupidity so much as how rage can blind you.

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Bibliography: From the Panchatantra unit. Story source: The Panchatantra of Vishnu Sharma, translated by Arthur W. Ryder (1925).

Image Information: A macaque from Wikipedia.