Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Storytelling Week 14: Hard Lessons

Once upon a time there were two people that lived a long time ago. These two men just so happened to be brothers. One of the men was very wealthy and had more money than his younger brother who was quite poor but content with his life. The older man had all this money but was pretty unhappy because he had to work most of his days away. The younger brother only worked a half-day so that he had plenty of time to spend with his family and enjoy his youth.

One day the younger brother sat down with the older brother for lunch and they discussed their lives and how each of them was doing. The older brother was telling the younger about all of the money he had acquired throughout life along with all of the things he owned. Even though the older brother had all these things the younger brother could tell he was unhappy. The younger brother questioned his happiness, which made the older brother extremely angry. He told his brother to go away because he knew nothing of money and was in no position to give him advice.

The younger brother took these words hard and left to live in another country. He lived there for many years and raised a happy family. He still didn't have much money but yet made enough to keep his family happy and give them what they needed to grow up strong. When the younger brother became old he had heard his brother had become very ill and he wished to say goodbye to his brother. This trip took him many weeks because there were no faster ways of traveling back then. The only way to travel was to walk with a donkey carrying your food and water.

When the younger brother arrived home he was met by a group of people that led him to his older brother's deathbed. He lay there and listened to his brother tell him how he became so successful and had all this money. Later he admitted that he should have listened to the younger brother and worked less so that he could enjoy his youth and be with his family. The older brother felt sorry for the harsh words he had said to his younger brother and decided to give him all of his wealth as long as he promised to take care of his family.

This story was a good lesson to be learned and from then on it was told to every generation of the family to remind them to never work so much that all of that money and time would be wasted with no memories of having a family that survived to old age.



Author's Note
This story was based off the story "The Fox and the Cat." The original story is about a fox bragging about how he had so many tricks to escape dogs to a cat that said he only had and needed one. The cat asked to fox to show him tricks to escape the dog. When the fox tried to show the cat the bag of tricks held down the fox so the dogs attacked him while the cat jumped into the tree to escape the dogs. The stories are similar, both had a characters who were killed because they had too much of something that weighed them down in life while the other had just enough to let them survive. The picture I chose is from the original story where the cat jumps in the tree while the fox gets attacked. I thought this picture would give the reader a good idea of what the original story was about. I chose to write the story with people as the main characters to give a more personal feel to the reader to learn a lesson on not what to do. 

Bibliography
"The Fox and the Cat" by the Grimm Brothers, from Grimm Brothers (Ashliman) (1998-2013) Web Source: UNtextbook

6 comments:

  1. Hey Tylor!
    I really liked this. It had an awesome message. It was easy to read and to the point. My favorite kind of reads! I had no idea that the story you used was the Fox and the Cat. That was some great creativity. Once I read your author's note and put it all together it made sense! Good job this week!

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  2. Hi Tylor! This story really does have an awesome message and I like the way you adapted it from the story of the Fox and the Cat. Time is something that money can never buy and you can never get back so it's very important that we are conscious of its importance.

    When you first started the story, I thought you were going to talk about two unrelated people, then I realized that the story was about two brothers. It might be a little clearer to start it out that way. Also, in the first sentence a go should be ago.

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  3. What a coincidence that I wrote my retelling over the same story! I’ve never had that happen before. I enjoyed your story and I believe we both went for the moral of the story. I did notice that there were a couple of words missing in your author’s note. Easy fix just read it out loud. Good story, nice work!

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  4. hey Tylor,
    I really liked this story and how you changed it. i like that you made it about time and money. those are a hard thing to balance. I have always said that if you can not enjiy your money then there is no point in making it and i fell like that is what the younger brother thought as well. good job and good luck these next two weeks!!!

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  5. I like the message the story is trying to tell. We do not have to be wealthy to have good lives. Some people put so much value on money, and less value on family and friends. I enjoyed reading this story because I am one of those people who value my family and friends much more than I do money. I had read the original story that you were trying to follow, and could tell thats the story you were basing this one off of. Good job!

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  6. Tylor,

    It was very interesting that you chose to retell this story by using two things that people place in high value. I think that made your story very easy to read, follow, and relate to. Excellent job by doing that! There were a few grammatical errors but after reading it out I could tell what you were trying to say. Other than that, excellent job!

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