Honorable Death
There was once a man who lived as
king but before being a king he was a soldier. This soldier had fought in many
wars before his time as king. He had made many enemies in his past wars. He was
one who would slaughter his enemies quite brutally, but he would make it
quick and painless. It was said he once slaughtered a lion with his just a
little dagger and managed to survive without any bites or scratches. This king
was thought of as an equal to Hercules. Word got out of his actions around the
world and many countries feared him. This caused a movement of strong
disliking for this man and all wished him the worst. The man continued his acts
regardless of his infamy. Eventually this man came to be one of the
deadliest assassins known to man.
As years passed by, the man had
conquered large parts of the world with his followers and with time became king
of a great kingdom. This kingdom was by far the strongest the world had ever seen.
It was a kingdom that had no fear of its enemies. Its enemies shivered at the
thought of this strong kingdom for it had the ability and resources to destroy their women and children in a matter of hours. It was a kingdom that with its
great majesty and power was ruler of all kingdoms and led by the man who had
created it.
The man was a true and honest king to his kingdom. He did everything for the kingdom and its people. He was a king who proved to the people that he had risked his life fighting and killing all enemies of the people. Even in his acts of defense for his people he committed atrocities for he was a beast and that was his nature. However, he would never hurt a person and leave them in agony. It was a code of honor he lived by and evoked this practice amongst his man so that they too could be like him. The king had lived his long life fighting and ruling until one day when he got sick of old age and no longer could rule. As it is known there is always evil lurking around the corners and so there it was in the kingdom. There were spies of the enemies in the kingdom where the king resided sick in his castle. The spies were able to infiltrate the castle and smuggle the sick dying king out of the kingdom. The enemies then got a hold of the dying king and they took turns beating the king and then healing him to health for the next day. The beating of the dying king went on for about four days. On the fourth day the enemy king took it to upon himself to beat the dying king personally with a whip. As the enemy king whipped the bloody back of the dying king, the dying king who was once the mightiest fighter of all yelled out, “This is a double death." The king eventually died with the opposite of an honorable death. He who would kill but never torture his enemies died in pain and agony.
The man was a true and honest king to his kingdom. He did everything for the kingdom and its people. He was a king who proved to the people that he had risked his life fighting and killing all enemies of the people. Even in his acts of defense for his people he committed atrocities for he was a beast and that was his nature. However, he would never hurt a person and leave them in agony. It was a code of honor he lived by and evoked this practice amongst his man so that they too could be like him. The king had lived his long life fighting and ruling until one day when he got sick of old age and no longer could rule. As it is known there is always evil lurking around the corners and so there it was in the kingdom. There were spies of the enemies in the kingdom where the king resided sick in his castle. The spies were able to infiltrate the castle and smuggle the sick dying king out of the kingdom. The enemies then got a hold of the dying king and they took turns beating the king and then healing him to health for the next day. The beating of the dying king went on for about four days. On the fourth day the enemy king took it to upon himself to beat the dying king personally with a whip. As the enemy king whipped the bloody back of the dying king, the dying king who was once the mightiest fighter of all yelled out, “This is a double death." The king eventually died with the opposite of an honorable death. He who would kill but never torture his enemies died in pain and agony.
Authors
Note: This
story was based off the story of The Sick Lion found in The Fables of Aesop
by Joseph Jacobs (1894). The story of "the sick lion" is about a lion that is sick and old. So the animals that were once its prey take advantage and beat him since he is defenseless. I kept a couple details the same including the last
words of the king. For the most part I changed the characters and the settings
of the story. I made the title of the story contradict what happens in the
story because it is what the king should have had instead of being beaten and
given the death he was given. The reason I chose this story was because honor is
something that I feel a lot of people lack now in days. It is very evident that people lack honor and mercy on other human beings around the world. I believe that someone in
agony or pain whether it is a friend or enemy should be honored. Not just
because it is the honorable thing to do but also because it is the ethical and right thing
to do. Nowadays people make other people suffer because of their own interest and are not very thoughtful of those suffering. Someone who does not follow this rule is someone who lacks respect
and has no honor. This makes me think back to the medieval times when knights
although soldiers had a code of honor. That is what I believe all people should
have good or bad.
(Picture of a warrior King)
Hi Angel, I liked your rendition of the story. The King died an un honorable death indeed especially after what he did for his followers. Unfortunately, his enemies saw him as a threat but it is funny that they waited for his old age to kill him, a sign of cowards. I liked the Irony in the title as well for the story was not expected.
ReplyDeleteAngel, this was a very good story. I think the irony found in your story is what makes this story a very entertaining one. You did a really good job with your words and ideas. Your story was very easy to follow and it kept me engaged. I think that your choice of format was the correct one as this was a bit lengthy but I was not bored or taken aback by it. Your break up structure was great as it provides pauses for the reader so that we can be kept engaged throughout the rest of the reading. You blog style is very calm and solemn and it is a good match for this story. By having a non busy blog style I was able to concentrate on your reading. I think that I would only suggest making your font a little bigger as it can be a little hard to read for those with eyesight issues. Overall, I think you did a wonderful job.
ReplyDeleteHello Angel. I really like the story you told and how you portrayed the tale. I really like the design of your website and the use of the dark and light color contrasts. It is simple, elegant, and does not distract the reader while reading your tales. However, I think there are a few things that you could do to make your stories much easier to read. I think for the first sentence that you accidentally pushed the space bar and separated it from the rest of the first paragraph. I agree with Limayre about making your font slightly larger in order to make it easier for the readers. Also I think there is something you could do with regards to your link for the photo. There is a way to place the link to your website in description text and it just makes it look more clean! I like your story's so far and I look forward to your future stories.
ReplyDeleteHey, great story. You did an excellent rendition of the original story. Your story read like a myth or a folk tale, which is generally our goal, so kudos for that!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I really liked that picture that you used for this post, but I agree with Justin that your caption needs to be more detailed, (use the actual title, actual artist, and include source with that.) If you look at my blog, you'll see how I do that.
As for your story, the only suggestion is one I tell many, which is to seperate it out into more paragraphs. It makes it more friendly to the reader when it's more broken up. BUT each paragraph should pertain to a certain topic.
But, overall, great job!
You did a great job of developing this story from the short fable. The original moral was "Only cowards insult dying majesty," but I could see another moral here too. Be careful of the enemies you make for revenge may come back on you in a time of weakness. That was definitely the case here. I wonder if the king regretted his past exploits as he lay dying? Your story definitely got me thinking about the characters, so great job.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the writing goes, I would suggest adding commas throughout your writing in places you would normally pause while speaking. As Lore suggested, breaking it up into smaller paragraphs would be helpful too. Overall it was a very entertaining and easy to read story.
Hi Angel, nice to meet you and read your post this week! Just to start off, I like the looks of your blog. It’s so cool you have the weather on there. LOL. I really enjoyed reading your story this week. It really caught my interest by the way you wrote it and the amount of detail you use. It’s the perfect amount between mystery and enough detail. Great job! I am also doing the portfolio and enjoy reading others to get some pointers. I need to work on adding more detail to my story and I think you’ve done a great job. Your author’s note was really helpful as well and helped the reader to understand the story. I really enjoyed this story and reading the way you retold it. Good start on the portfolio and I look forward to reading more of your stories. Good luck on the rest of your project!
ReplyDeleteHi Angel,
ReplyDeleteI really like the stories that you have started with in your portfolio. They are really well written and you've done a good job with the Author's notes in explaining the original story, what you have changed, and your personal reason for choosing the story.
The color scheme and the way your blog is set up makes it easy to focus on the story. It's simple and no overwhelming so it doesn't take away from the story but forces you to focus on it.
The only thing that I am quite confused about is the introduction to your portfolio? It's a post with two links to it? Are introductions necessary for the portfolio. If so, I'd say that you could use that to explain where you're trying to go with your portfolio and what you're trying to achieve with your collection of stories. You're got a really strong beginning, I just think the "Introduction" post has thrown me off a bit.
Hope your semester is going well and I look forward to reading more of your stories throughout.
Hi Angel,
ReplyDeleteI think it's amazing that you made such an intricate story from something that i know was rather short! I liked the layout of the story and the idea, but there are somethings that I would suggest.
You do have some grammatical errors that would be an easy fix. They appear to be where you changed a sentence and just didn't erase the entirety of the former sentence. Just do a quick reread and you'll probably see them.
Also, the story kind of seems to repeat itself a bit. I kind of got lost and then lost interest about halfway through cause it just went in circles. You might shorten the descriptive part of it and lengthen the "action" towards the end so that the reader retains interest.
Overall, I loved the idea of the story, but thought the execution might need a little bit of work. I think that it would be an easy fix, it would just take a little time!
Hey, Angel,
ReplyDeleteI’m really enjoying your portfolio! I just have a two critiques.
First, there are some minor formatting issues – you have a space underneath your first paragraph, but not under any of the subsequence ones. When reading a lot of text on a computer, the words all start to blend together – so smaller paragraphs and spaces between them are a lot easier on the eye. And when your audience is able to read comfortably, they’ll enjoy your story more!
Second, give your characters names! It’ll help you when you’re writing so you don’t overuse “the man” or “the king” while simultaneously giving the reader someone to connect with. Names help to add extra layers to character, they can provide hints to backgrounds like where they live, what kind of family they come from, and their ethnicity.
I honestly can’t stress the first one enough – and I’m not trying to pick on you, it’s just that I see a lot of people in this class posting these huge blocks of text that make my eyes cross and it’s getting harder and harder to force myself to look at them.
Overall though, I enjoyed your story. Your tone was good and consistent.
This story was great. I really enjoyed the flow of your writing. I think you are very good at what you do. Your story was easy to follow and easy to understand. The break ups in your story made it feel like less. Yes, the story was long, but how you formatted it made it much easier to read.
ReplyDeleteI really like your blog. It is simple, yet different. It is not too ditracting which is a huge plus in my opinion. I get distracted easily, so if there are too many colors or too many fonts, I won’t focus much on the story!
The only change I would make would be to make your title a little larger. I feel like all the other text is a good size and the title gets looked over.
Overall, I think you did really good! Good job! I cannot wait to come back and read some more!
Hi Angel,
ReplyDeleteWow, your author’s note really made me think a lot about our society and I completely agree. I don’t think people have the honor, mercy, and respect for other humans than they should anymore. This was a great story and I like that you named it the honorable death even though he King, in fact, did not die an honorable death at all. I liked how you spaced out the paragraphs in this story. At first, I was confused about why the first paragraph was separate from the rest of the story but that was because you were setting up the background of the King and his interactions with the people in the village and the enemies. The image you used for this story really portrays the personality of the King, too. I think it was a good choice to keep the underlying plot line and the last words of the King but change the characters to make the reader better understand and relate. Keep up the good work and I can’t wait to read more stories in your storybook!
This was a great story to add to your portfolio. Its solid and its well written. I didn’t see grammatical errors or confusing parts, so you did a good job editing. The only thing I would say is that you might break up the last paragraph so that it’s not so long. I found the title ironic since he definitely did not die an honorable death. It kind of gave me a little surprise to read the ending because I thought he was going to get an honorable death since he’s a great warrior.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you changed the settings of the story. Telling a story in medieval times is something I’m always drawn to doing, so reading yours is entertaining. The changes you made to give the dishonorable death to a king amplify the meaning to the story. You did a great job with this story and look forward to reading more in your portfolio.
Hey Angel! I enjoyed reading your story. I think you did a great job of adapting the original story into something new and fresh. I only have a couple of suggestions for corrections. It should be "before becoming a king" in the first sentence. I think the picture you chose was excellent, but it should be further up the page so people can picture the king while reading about him. I like that you used the king of the jungle and turned him into an actual king. I think that is clever. I also liked the way that the knight kills with honor like animals kill without torturing their victim. I think that makes a great parallel. The king was so noble that it makes it so much worse how he dies! Even though it was a tragic ending it provided a lot of emotion to the story. Good job, and I look forward to reading more of your stories in the future!
ReplyDelete