Week 9 Story: A Burning Evil Plan
Hello there,
My name is Duryodhana and I am a King here in this great city along with my brothers. We have prospered here lately and even have enough wealth to share with the people. However, I do not wish to share my throne with the princes of the next generation. So, being the intelligent man that I am, I have devised a plan. Recently I had constructed an amazing palace. However, the palace's roof and furniture were all soaked in oil and became extremely flammable. I am going to recommend that the Pandavas Princes move in to this palace with their mother and then have my most trusted guardsmen set fire to the building when they drop their guard.
1 year later....
It has been one year since I had the Pandavas family move into the palace I had made for them. Everything is going according to plan. Purochana, the captain of the guard that I instructed to burn the palace when the time is right, believes the time is coming. He tells me that for a long time there would always be at least one brother awake at night suspicious of oil soaked furniture. But now he tells me that they have begun to be at ease and are all falling asleep together. Tomorrow night is the night he says. The night, where the Pandavas family burns.
2 Nights later...
The plan went off splendidly!!! The Pandavas' bodies have been recovered from the ashes of the palace. As a bonus, somehow the guards house near the palace also caught fire which burned Purochana as well. Now I don't have to reward him for his deeds, and no one knows anything about it all being my plan to burn the Pandavas. This could not have worked out better!! I think I'll take the money I would've paid Purochana with and throw a party instead. I could just easily pass it off as a celebration of life of the family and the fallen guards who died in the "tragic" fire.
Author's Notes: Okay I did it, I tried writing a story differently than normal. With this story, I already told the story of the Pandavas a few weeks ago as a general overall premise so in order to tell this story again I had to change how I would write it so it wouldn't be written the same as before. To accomplish this, I chose to write it in first person from the perspective of Duryodhana, the mastermind behind the burning home. In the story, the Pandavas knew about the plan from their uncle and actually managed to escape the night of the fire, while a beggar family who was at the palace that night was actually the set of bodies recovered. In the story, Duryodhana is unaware of the "switch" and believes the Pandavas to be dead so I made sure to keep with that and write the ending from his perspective as well. Hope you enjoy this little experiment on a new for me writing style.
Bibliography: Source Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. Krishna Dharma. 2008
My name is Duryodhana and I am a King here in this great city along with my brothers. We have prospered here lately and even have enough wealth to share with the people. However, I do not wish to share my throne with the princes of the next generation. So, being the intelligent man that I am, I have devised a plan. Recently I had constructed an amazing palace. However, the palace's roof and furniture were all soaked in oil and became extremely flammable. I am going to recommend that the Pandavas Princes move in to this palace with their mother and then have my most trusted guardsmen set fire to the building when they drop their guard.
1 year later....
It has been one year since I had the Pandavas family move into the palace I had made for them. Everything is going according to plan. Purochana, the captain of the guard that I instructed to burn the palace when the time is right, believes the time is coming. He tells me that for a long time there would always be at least one brother awake at night suspicious of oil soaked furniture. But now he tells me that they have begun to be at ease and are all falling asleep together. Tomorrow night is the night he says. The night, where the Pandavas family burns.
2 Nights later...
The plan went off splendidly!!! The Pandavas' bodies have been recovered from the ashes of the palace. As a bonus, somehow the guards house near the palace also caught fire which burned Purochana as well. Now I don't have to reward him for his deeds, and no one knows anything about it all being my plan to burn the Pandavas. This could not have worked out better!! I think I'll take the money I would've paid Purochana with and throw a party instead. I could just easily pass it off as a celebration of life of the family and the fallen guards who died in the "tragic" fire.
The Escape of the Pandavas
Image Source
Author's Notes: Okay I did it, I tried writing a story differently than normal. With this story, I already told the story of the Pandavas a few weeks ago as a general overall premise so in order to tell this story again I had to change how I would write it so it wouldn't be written the same as before. To accomplish this, I chose to write it in first person from the perspective of Duryodhana, the mastermind behind the burning home. In the story, the Pandavas knew about the plan from their uncle and actually managed to escape the night of the fire, while a beggar family who was at the palace that night was actually the set of bodies recovered. In the story, Duryodhana is unaware of the "switch" and believes the Pandavas to be dead so I made sure to keep with that and write the ending from his perspective as well. Hope you enjoy this little experiment on a new for me writing style.
Bibliography: Source Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. Krishna Dharma. 2008
Hi Jake! I really like the way you portray Duryodhana as an overly confident and greedy ruler who thinks the world of himself and does not want to share his power. Also, the way you structured the story flowed well and it was easy to keep track of the plot even with a extended timeline. It was interesting to read the story from Duryodhana's perspective and not know if the Pandavas survived or not at the end.
ReplyDeleteJake, I want to begin by saying props to you for trying a new writing style. It can be hard to put yourself outside of your comfort zone so I wanna congratulate you on that. As far as your story goes, I really liked that you chose to write in first person as Duryodhana, it gives you more perspective and it is a unique idea.
ReplyDeleteHi again Jake!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE stories from the bad guys. The Duryodhana you've described is very similar to how I imagined him. The only thing I would recommend, is possibly adding more of a journal style beginning for the piece, as he seems to be writing a letter to someone as is, but it reads more like a diary. That, or maybe including a final sentence for the intended reader of the letter, who I'd love to know more about as well. Good job on straying from the beaten path!
Hey Jake! The way you wrote this story was very creative. It can be a lot of fun rewriting the story from the perspective of the villain. I usually try to give the villain some good qualities and show how they’re simply misunderstood. You, however, kept Duryodhana at maximum evilness, which is really interesting. It was also cool because as readers of the original story, we knew the Pandavas survived. Now, we see that Duryodhana really thought he had been successful and was thrilled about it. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteA burning evil plan! What a great name! There are so many different things happening within the epics, so it is interesting to see how people interpret them. It was really great getting to read your author's note as well because you decided to step out of your normal writing style. This is always something that is hard to do.
ReplyDelete