Week 2 Story: Why Lions Fear Mice
Lion Prowling in the Grasslands, picture from Creative Commons
Once upon a time, there was a lion that prowled the grasslands of Africa.
He prowled all night and all day. The fearless lionesses and their cubs believed the lion was simply too proud to sit.
Little did they know the lion was struggling to sleep. Every day his heavy eyelids would close, and he would drift to sleep. Suddenly the lion would be running away from a splitting Earth. He would watch his fearless lionesses and their cubs fall into the center of the world.
The lion would awaken, check on his lionesses and their cubs, and then prowl the grasslands looking for any small cracks in the soil.
One night, the lion awoke from his dream to the cracking sound of the Earth and a bolt of lightning shattering the ground in front of him. Rain poured too heavy to see what happened, but the lion believed he knew.
The lion leapt on his throne of rocks and let out a roar that reached the ends of Africa. He said "We must go fearless lionesses and fearless cubs. The end of the world has come. Run with me".
Together they ran.
A gazelle saw the lions running and dared to ask why they were running.
The fearless cubs said "The King saw the end of the world. We must run to escape death. Please come with us or you will certainly die".
The gazelle ran, other gazelles saw this and joined. Elephants, foxes, bison, cheetahs, and every animal in the grasslands ran. All but one.
A wise rabbit stood in the way of the stampede. The animals dug their paws and hoofs into the dirt coming to a quick and clumsy stop. The wise rabbit asked the fox why she was running.
The fox exclaimed "The world is ending wise rabbit!"
"Who saw the world end?" Asked the wise rabbit.
All the animals looked perplexed and stood chattering. Then the lion emerged from the stampede and said, "wise rabbit, I saw the anger of the stars crack down on the world, the world broke and echoed in the ears of all kings."
"Perhaps we should return and examine the end of the world" suggested the wise rabbit.
"Oh wise rabbit" sighed the lion "We must leave or we to will meet our dea..."
The wise rabbit interrupted, "You must rest great King, or you will be seeking death"
The lion turned away from the wise rabbit in frustration. Behind him was a stampede of animals fast asleep. Gazelles curled up with cheetahs, and foxes cuddling with cubs. The lion signed and agreed to show the rabbit where the world had met it's end.
When they arrived at the King's throne, a small dead mouse laid beside it.
"It must have only been this mouse you heard....perhaps you need to rest....I will return to the stampede and tell them....you try to sleep while you can foolish lion" suggested the wise rabbit.
The wise rabbit returned to the stampede and told them the world had not ended, it was only a mouse. The animals returned to their homes, chattering about how silly a lion must be to fear a mouse. The world was saved thanks to the wise rabbit and the lion never liked another mouse again.
Author's note:
Hey guys! Thank you for reading my story. This story was inspired from The Foolish, Timid Rabbit. Since we all had the opportunity to read this story I will briefly go over the big development and changes I made to create my story.
Main Characters:
- I changed the timid rabbit to actually be a source of wisdom (replacing the lion in the original story).
- The lion was inspired by the timid rabbit from the original story
Plot:
- I kept the plot pretty close to the same, but I did add a few things. I added a bit more backstory before going into the "world is ending" part of the story. I also added a fun little explanation on why lions fear mice. This was a super last minute add, like I thought of it while writing about my main characters in the author's note haha. Let me know what you think about that addition! It it may have made the story to crowded, but feel free to comment what you think :)
Bibliography : The Foolish, Timid Rabbit from Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt [web source here]
Hey Camille!
ReplyDeleteI did this story too! I really enjoyed your take on it a lot more than the one I wrote ha. I really love that you added the backstory to give us a better understanding of who the characters were. I thought it was interested that the Lion, who is usually supposed to be brave and fearless was inspired by the foolish rabbit. That was an interesting take for sure! Overall, I really enjoyed your story and cannot wait to read more.
Hi Camille,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your story. There's a lot of great literary analysis that can be taken out of your version. The rabbit is usually a trickster archetype. Changing the characters around like this makes the reader grapple with the underlying message of the story instead of just shaking their head and saying, "Oh, that Rabbit! He'll never learn!" It also changes how we interpret the reaction of the other animals. In the original story, one might wonder why the heck all of those animals followed Rabbit in spite of his constant foolishness and trickery. In this story, Lion is a leader, and it makes sense that the other animals would follow him if he was running away.
The backstory that you created for Lion fits in really well. We don't like it when our leaders do something foolish, so we look for the reasons behind their actions. Giving Lion a good reason to run away helps the audience understand this is a Jataka Tale and not a political commentary.
My only suggestion is to run your stories through Grammarly to help catch some of your grammatical mistakes. They're not super obvious mistakes, but you have several ELA and English majors taking this class with you. We get weird about grammar! ;) Your other writing elements are spot-on, though. I'm very impressed.
-Eden