Week 4 Story: A retelling of the story of Arachne
Current version at my portfolio
name is Athena, goddess of wisdom and war. Once, long ago, I had heard rumors of a young mortal girl in the village of Maeonia who thought that she was the most skilled weaver to have ever lived. She went by the name Arachne, and -to be quite frank- was nothing all that special- the definition of a mere mortal. She did not come from a noble family, nor did she have much money. She was good at weaving, I will give her that, but definitely not good enough for her to claim that no one else could compete with her. As you likely already know, I myself am quite skilled in the art of weaving. I can depict beautiful scenes with the yarn in a fraction of the time that it would take most mortals. One day, I decided that I had had enough of her attitude. So I left my home on Olympus and went to pay Arachne a little visit. Of course, I could not let her know who I was before I challenged her, as anyone with a brain would refuse such an unfairly weighted game. So I disguised myself as a little old lady, complete with grey hair and wrinkly skin. I gave her a warning first; that she needs to respect the gods and goddesses. She is more than welcome to seek fame and fortune as one of the great mortals who is incredibly skilled in weaving, but she must not pretend or insinuate that she is equal to a goddess. Arachne responded quite rudely, and asked the old woman why Athena herself had not come to defend her title. I of course took this perfect moment to theatrically transform back into myself and challenge this haughty mortal to a challenge. We took our places at our respective looms, and got to work. With speed and accuracy, I wove a beautiful picture that told the tales of four gods and the mortals that they punished for deeming themselves as comparable to us. Arachne retaliated with a picture that showed crimes once committed by the gods. I hate to admit that she did do a beautiful job. Of course, mine was still better, and I needed to teach her a lesson about being too prideful and not respecting the gods. I placed a curse on her and all of her descendants. She became what you now call a spider, and continues to weave even now.
For this storytelling, I decided to retell the story of Athena and Arachne. It was originally written as part of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and was translated by Tony Kline. I wanted to do a simple retelling, so I chose to write the story from Athena's perspective, as if she were telling the story to a friend many years after the incident.
Hi, Natalie! I really enjoyed your first person retelling of Athena and Arachne's story. I feel writing it from that point of view gives us an intimate look into the inner workings and motivations in Athena's head. It was like I could hear her outrage as Arachne continued to be defiant and disrespectful to her. Athena clearly wasn't messing around, and came ready to smite. You were able to put a lot of personality into her point of view with your strong word choices.
ReplyDeleteHey Natalie! This was a great retelling of the original Arachne story. I remember learning about this in middle school and being in love with it. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this come from Athena's point of view. But I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like from Arachne's? Because you chose to narrate as Athena there is of course going to be bias towards her cause. I think it could be interesting to see Arachne's thoughts on the weaving showdown. Was she really as prideful as Athena believes she is? I also really appreciated your attention to detail. Imagery is really big with me and your descriptions of the old woman that Athena disguised herself as and the scenes portrayed in the weavings were great! Something that struck me was that this could almost be seen as a diary entry. I don't know what you're doing for your final project but if you are creating a storybook I would recommend doing diary entry type writing. You seem to be very good at it!
ReplyDeleteHi Natalie!
ReplyDeleteI liked your retelling of this story; it was simple and more engaging for me personally. Telling the story from Athena's perspective allowed me to understand her thoughts and feelings. I thought it was funny that Athena admits to herself that Arachne did a great job with her weaving (i.e. that she is also a great weaver), but, of course, she believed her weaving was better. I thought it was kind of ironic that Athena wanted to teach Arachne a lesson about being prideful by turning her into a spider, but Athena did not realize that she, too, was being arrogant. I understand Athena's frustration with Arachne and wanting to teach her a lesson, but I wonder if there could be more elaboration on Arachne's disrespectfulness of the gods. I can tell that Arachne is overconfident, but I would like to see more of her boldness and defiance that Athena loathes. I think this is a great story, but what if you added dialogue between characters to enhance the drama? It would help to break up the story into paragraphs so that it is easier to read, but allows readers to feel like they are also there, especially because the story already has very descriptive storytelling! I look forward to reading more of your stories.
Hey, Natalie!
ReplyDeleteI am very impressed with how you described your story and how you came up with it as a whole. By description, I mean how you carefully used syntax to your advantage to add a really unique description to your characters and setting. Sentences like, "with speed and accuracy" really painted a well-formed picture in my head, almost as I was present with the characters as you described them, as well as the setting that they are in.
What if you added a little more imagery to your story with pictures? I know only one is required, but the way you set up your plot and characters, as well as you utilized your syntax, I think creating your story in a way that describes the characters and adding more picture as you went, you can really add in more descriptions! I wonder how that would turn out once you did that, but honestly -- I think even without it -- it looks fantastic.
Great job!