The Serpent's Lesson
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Once there was an old man who lived in the life near Jerusalem. He and his wife were becoming ill and knew their death was upon them. The man sent a messenger to notify his son. His son's name was Spencer. His son arrived and he explained to him that him and mother were going to die and that he would need to mourn a week before Passover. Once Passover came he would need to go to the market and buy the first thing a merchant offered him and take care of it. Later that evening the father died.
The son did as he was told. He mourned with his wife and child the week before Passover, then went to the market on Passover. The first person he met was salesperson who offer for him to buy a medium sized box. Spencer asked, “ how much for the box?”
The salesman said, ”1000 gold pieces.”
Spencer knew this was a great cost, but wanted to follow his father’s wishes and bought the box. When he arrived home home, he opened the box and it contained a snake. Right there the snake spoke and said “ I am hungry. Will you feed me?”
Remembering what his father said he fed the snake and started to care for it. It continued to ask for food for several weeks and grew to an enormous size. Finally one day the snake made the a different and biggest request of all. He said, “let me eat your child.”
For some reason spencer following the snakes request and his father wishes he fed the snake his child. The next day spencer and his wife were mourning the loss of their child and the snake asked for them to follow him. He lead them to the edge of a forest. At the edge of the forest the snake began become transparent and morphed into the form of a human. The human form said, “ I am Eve from the old days of the first humans. You have treated with kindness and taken care of me even though I have taken everything from you. For this I will reward you and your wife Spencer by first giving you back your child and many riches of the world.”
Out of the bushes came their child and many creatures carrying many jewels, different foods, and finally rare spices. Then Eve spoke again. She said, “For your kindness and humility these presents shall help to make the rest of your life have less hardship. I do have one request though. I ask that you do the same with your child and I will wipe his memory of these events to test his kindness when he is older.”
Spencer agreed with these terms. After that Eve left into the forest. Spencer and his family lived life very happily after this event in there life. Spencer waited until the day he had to tell his child he was dying and hopes his child will do the same that he did.
Author's notes : The original story that I read was "The Fairy Frog." the story started out similar with a father's death and telling his son to grieve and get something from a market. He got a coffin that contained a frog. They feed the frog until the were on the brink of starvation. They were kind and listened to frog also. Now they did not feed a child to the frog. the original story did not even have child. In the end of the story the frog was Adam but did not turn into a human figure but shrank back into a frog. He did present the family with treasures but did not tell them to continue this tradition through the family. The last change was I changed the characters name from Hanina
bibliography: source story and author:The Fairy Frog by Gertrude Landa
This story was really interesting, and your adaptation made me want to check out the original. Really loved the story progression, it was well-paced. You didn't spend too much or too little time in any one plot point--I wish that there was more descriptive detail...though maybe you're trying to keep with the matter-of-fact method that I noticed in the Jewish fairytales? You've already got a great story, I just think that describing the snake or the father-son relationship would spice things up for the reader.
ReplyDeleteThis was such an interesting story to read! It was well written and had some unique and creative aspects to it. I liked how it was very to the point. It was easy for the reader to understand and follow along. I liked the ending of it, how the parents were to raise the child so that he could one day go through the same things that the parents had to.
ReplyDeleteHi Nick!
ReplyDeleteI have not read “The Fairy Frog” so this was a new story for me, and I really enjoyed it! For me I think the wow moment was when the snake asked for the child to be fed to it because that is such a big and heartbreaking request. I was really hoping that Spencer wouldn’t do it, and that makes it a very tense moment. I wonder what it was like for Spencer to make that decision. What was that internal conflict like? Did his wife have anything to say about it? What if instead of saying “for some reason” Spencer did it, you wrote about what his decision process was, even if it is just something small like “not wanting to lose his child but trusting his father’s instructions he fed his child to the snake.”
On a different note, I see that you broke the story into paragraphs, which is a great idea, but what if you added an extra line in between those paragraphs? I think it would help break up the story visually into nice bite size chunks (no pun intended) that are more reader friendly. I learned from my technical writing class that readers are a lot more likely to stay engaged and not wander off if the reading they are doing just looks more manageable, even if it is technically still the same number of words.
I hope that this feedback has been helpful!
-Cat
Hi Nick!
ReplyDeleteI am enjoyed your story although it terrified me the part that the parents agreed to feed the snake their child. Even though i have never read the Fairy Frog, but i can connect the two stories through your author's note.
If i was this child, I do have the question though, "I am your son, is it possible that the promise to the deceased is more important than my life? Why, when I'm gone, you're mourn, is that not so ridiculous?".