The first time John wept was when his
parents passed away from illness. As he wept, he heard a weird thump noise on
the ground below him. His eyes opened and he grew into shock as he saw a gold
coin on the floor. A few more tears fell to the ground and his eyes, that were still fixed
on the ground, saw that his tears turned into gold coins. His tears stopped from being so baffled at the fact that his body was
able to produce gold. It was hard for him to deal with his newfound power and decided
to keep it as a secret in fear of being taken advantage of by other people.
John never felt
the need to cry unless he was thinking about his parent’s death. When he did
think of them, he would hold in his emotions as best as he could until he was
alone to then let out his tears. After he would cry, he would keep the gold
coins in a secret place underneath his floorboard incase someone robbed his
cottage.
A few weeks later, John's neighbors husband passed away and she had two children to raise by herself. He could tell the family was struggling with their loss, especially because the
wife had no job. After a lot of thought, John decided to help them out. He went
to their house and told the wife about his power and promised to come everyday
and cry gold coins for her. She agreed to his nice gesture and the deal was
set.
After two weeks go by, the wife
turns greedy and wants more gold from the John. Her children overhear her plans
and beg her to not do it but she would not listen. Before John walked in her door, he would always bring up images of his parents death so he could cry a gold coin for the wife. But once he walked through the neighbors front door, the wife grabbed him and tied him to a chair.
“I am going to get everything I can
from you. You can’t fool me, you were going to stop coming sooner or later!”
The woman exclaimed in a crazy manner as she tied John's arms behind the chair.
The wife’s
two children tried to get John out of the chair but the mother would only push them
into a room and lock them away. John wiggled in the chair and tugged at the
roped that bonded his arms but it was no use, he was unable to
get loose. The wife then got out an onion and cut it open to then place under
the nose and eyes of John. While he inhaled, his eyes watered and tears dripped down to
the floor but there was no sound. John and the wife looked down and there was
no sign of gold coins.
“Stop playing games, John. Where
are the coins!” Yelled the wife in anger.
John knew that he was only able to
produce the gold coins if he was mourning over the loss of his parents but he
did not want to tell the wife this because she would use this against him.
After fiddling with the rope some more,
he was able to get loose and ran out of the house when the wife went to unlock her children from their room. John decided to leave town immediately so he packed up all his gold and valuables to then travel north on foot. He knew now that he could never trust anyone. Even if
he was trying to do a good thing, he could only trust himself.
Crying Boy by Miika Silfverberg taken in Vantaa, Finland (2006).
Author's Note: I used the story of The Golden Goose by Ellen C. Babbitt (1922) form Jataka Tales (Babbitt) to write my storytelling. The story is about a goose that had gold feathers and he decided to help out a poor family of a wife and two children by giving them a gold feather each day. The wife became greedy and captured the goose and plucked all his feathers out. Because the feathers were plucked out against his will, they turned into regular feathers. Once his feathers grew back, the goose flew away and never came back. The story was the same except the fact that they were human, neighbors, the gold could only be produced from the mourning of his parents and it was tears instead of feathers.
I really liked your story. To be honest it was so original that I did not even realize it was supposed to be fashioned after the story of the Golden Goose (which I am familiar with). I kind of wished that John had taken the greedy woman’s children with him when he ran away. They had defended him against their mother and she did not deserve them.
ReplyDeleteWow Renae! I loved the way you twisted the story to make it your own. I like that you made the characters very relatable. John mourning his parents and his tears turning into gold is very creative. I also like how you incorporated the greedy mother of two children who tried to kidnap John and make him cry. The ending was really nice where John could not produce gold unless his tears were genuine. Great job!
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ReplyDeleteWord Choice: Though your word choice throughout the tale was very well thought of, there are some places where you said more than you needed to. For example, in the first paragraph: "His tears stopped from being so baffled at the fact that his body was able to produce gold." This is an instance of "telling" and not "showing" the reader what is happening in the story, and it doesn't really add anything to emotionally charge the narrative. Instead, maybe write something like,"Shocked at what he was witnessing, he did stop crying and momentarily forgot about his ordeal."
ReplyDeleteCharacters: In contrast to how much emotional background you gave the protagonist, you gave the widowed neighbor, the antagonist, little to no background. This made it weird for me as a reader to understand why she was so greedy and abusive. To make her a stronger antagonist, maybe you could mention in the storyline that her husband died because she murdered him and wanted to cash in on his will.
Setting: Again, I felt like I was not given enough background on the settings to really immerse myself in the story. This is especially the case in the paragraph when the mother first ties up John: you mention the neighbor ties him to a chair after he enters the front door. Why did he do that? Also, wouldn't it be more logical for the mother to take John down to the basement (or somewhere similar) to interrogate him so that no one would hear what she was doing to him? Just food for thought.
Renae, I liked how you took the story and changed it to make it your own. However, based on your description of the story, the two stories seemed very similar to each other. Maybe if you had added some extra details or changed a few small things, it would have made the story more of your own. I think I also saw one to two punctuation errors. They weren't anything big but you may want to try taking a second look at your story before you publish it, just in case.
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