Week 11 Story: The Giant Student
Portfolio location: https://sites.google.com/view/crayonandonand/the-giant-student?authuser=0
Once upon a time, there was a giant student at OU who happened to be really smart, too. She would walk up and down the South Oval with long, lumbering strides, quietly minding her own business, careful not to step on any normal-sized passerby. Every day, the giant student attended class and sat in the back, taking copious, detailed notes and listening attentive to each of her professors. For a long time she lived this serene existence, being large and smart and unobtrusive despite the size of her body and intellect.
One day, a small, hairy student tried to sit in the back of the room, where the giant student always sat. Tiny, as he was called, plopped into the chair in the back despite the warnings of his classmates--he would be squashed! The giant student would never notice him!
But the giant student ducked through the doorway into class, saw Tiny in her chair, and calmly sat in the chair in front of him and took out her notebook and pen. Through all class, Tiny could not see the professor--not that he cared. He spend all of class poking and prodding the giant student, pulling tufts of hair from his body and throwing them into the air at the giant student, and worst of all, taking his pencils, fastening them together, and lobbing multi-pointed missiles at the giant student.
But the giant student would not budge. Instead, she continued to take careful notes and listen to the lecture.
At the end of class, after Tiny had left the room with a parting sneer at the giant student, the professor of that class approached the giant student and asked, "Why do you allow him to do that? You are so smart and large, you could crush him with a quick swing of your fist or a brainwave from your awesome brain."
The giant student replied, "I know this, but I pity Tiny. He has neither my brawn nor my brain, nor anything comparable, and he acts as though he is a monkey trapped in a classroom. Which, I suppose, he is. We all are. But I digress. Tiny is not worth my animosity; I should treat him fairly in accord with what he has been accorded in this life."
The professor, awed with this sage response, gave the giant student an A for life in everything she did and was to do. The giant student accepted it with humility, knowing that she would have always gotten an A in everything, anyways.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I really liked the Jataka Tale "The Patient Buffalo" in the collection Twenty Jataka Tales by Noor Inayat. I thought that this tale was cool considering the ancient moral of patience in the face of insolence from someone 'lower' than the one being bothered. I adapted it to modern day but wanted to keep it fun, so I included some grotesque characters. I think that the giant student works for the buffalo, and Tiny works for the monkey. In any case, this is a short story, and I'll probably lengthen it for a later assignment.
Bibliography: Inayat, Noor. Twenty Jataka Tales. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.39000000078449&view=2up&seq=102
Once upon a time, there was a giant student at OU who happened to be really smart, too. She would walk up and down the South Oval with long, lumbering strides, quietly minding her own business, careful not to step on any normal-sized passerby. Every day, the giant student attended class and sat in the back, taking copious, detailed notes and listening attentive to each of her professors. For a long time she lived this serene existence, being large and smart and unobtrusive despite the size of her body and intellect.
One day, a small, hairy student tried to sit in the back of the room, where the giant student always sat. Tiny, as he was called, plopped into the chair in the back despite the warnings of his classmates--he would be squashed! The giant student would never notice him!
But the giant student ducked through the doorway into class, saw Tiny in her chair, and calmly sat in the chair in front of him and took out her notebook and pen. Through all class, Tiny could not see the professor--not that he cared. He spend all of class poking and prodding the giant student, pulling tufts of hair from his body and throwing them into the air at the giant student, and worst of all, taking his pencils, fastening them together, and lobbing multi-pointed missiles at the giant student.
But the giant student would not budge. Instead, she continued to take careful notes and listen to the lecture.
At the end of class, after Tiny had left the room with a parting sneer at the giant student, the professor of that class approached the giant student and asked, "Why do you allow him to do that? You are so smart and large, you could crush him with a quick swing of your fist or a brainwave from your awesome brain."
The giant student replied, "I know this, but I pity Tiny. He has neither my brawn nor my brain, nor anything comparable, and he acts as though he is a monkey trapped in a classroom. Which, I suppose, he is. We all are. But I digress. Tiny is not worth my animosity; I should treat him fairly in accord with what he has been accorded in this life."
The professor, awed with this sage response, gave the giant student an A for life in everything she did and was to do. The giant student accepted it with humility, knowing that she would have always gotten an A in everything, anyways.
The giant student. Source.
Bibliography: Inayat, Noor. Twenty Jataka Tales. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.39000000078449&view=2up&seq=102
I really liked your interpretation of this story! I’m glad things worked out for the giant student! I definitely would not have been as patient with Tiny had I been in her situation. The modern adaptation was a fun addition. The characters you created were a good representation of the original, but still different enough that they stood alone from the source material. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteHi Alex!
ReplyDeleteI really like the amount of detail you used in the first part of the story to describe the giant student and the small hairy student. I could picture the exact scene in my head! I also really liked your use of vocabulary. Words like copious, lobbed, and tufts…just to name a few….really give another layer of detail to the story. However, the words don’t feel out of place as if you were trying too hard. It’s well-written and easy to read. I think you did a fantastic job retelling this story!