Reading Notes: The Monkey King Part B

The Lord of the Heavens

This is an interesting piece to read and also a good one to tie the two halves of the story collection together. I think a fun idea for a rewrite of this piece would be to modernize it and have it set in a coffee shop where the characters come to meet the Lord of the Heavens and tell him why they are so upset with the great monkey king.

The great monkey king. Source: Pixabay

The Great Saint

I like the way that the lesson in this piece is so clear and easy to see. For a rewrite, I am considering changing what happens to the opposite. I would give the king a job that is considered to be of high authority and then have him decide he was too lonely or that it was too hard, driving him to the same conclusion that this low job did in the original version.

Notscha, Son of Li Dsing

There's an interesting aspect of trickery in this section in the way that Notscha was disguised as a young kid and Sun Wu Kung didn't even notice it, catching him off guard when the other prince began to swing at him. For a rewrite, I might consider changing the power that Sun Wu Kung utilized and change it from something like invisibility instead of shape shifting.

The Queen-Mother of the West

This was an odd story and I had a harder time understanding the point of it than I did with most of the other things that I have read so far in this collection. I am not sure which direction I would like to take a rewrite but maybe I could do something as simple as even writing it from the perspective of the Queen instead of the voice that it is in now.

Laotzse

For a rewrite of this piece, I was thinking that I could simply change the format to a letter instead of the style that it is written in right now. This could be a letter of correspondence between the Queen and Sun Wu Kung about the festival where they fight out their differences in opinion with each other.

Guan Yin

I like how this story talks about the fairies that had been trapped in their spot, but have now regained their freedom. This might be a small aspect to focus on but I like the idea of writing a story from their perspective about how they might plan to get back at the monkey king or seek their revenge for being trapped.

Yang Oerlang

Again, I like the shape shifting part of this story but I could write it in a style similar to my idea for the Notscha piece and make him invisible instead. I would keep the outcome the same, but simply change how he got to the final result. 

The Destiny of Sun Wu Kung

I think that a fun idea for a rewrite on this would also be to do a boot camp/training session of some sort where Sun Wu Kung is trying to prove himself to the Buddha. It would end with his destiny being determined based on his performance.

Journey to the West (Synopsis & Conclusion)

This story was interesting, but I don't think that it is one that I want to use as my rewrite for this unit. I had a hard time understanding pieces of it and I don't know what I would want to change about it.

Bibliography

R. Wilhelm's Monkey King Unit