Epics of India!: Reading Notes: The Five Tall Sons of Pandu (Parts A & B)

This week, I read The Five Tall Sons of Pandu, which is Richard Wilson's version of the Mahabharata, and I'm combining the reading notes from parts A and B into one blog post since this version is fairly short. Part A consisted of the introduction of the give Pandava brothers, Arjuna winning Draupadi as his wife in a contest, Yudhisthira's gambling match, and the exile of the brothers and Draupadi from beginning to end. Part B consisted of the war between Duryodhana and the Pandavas and the battles won and lost by each character.

What I thought was interesting in Wilson's story is his style of writing and his changes from the original story. The writing style was more like a SparkNotes summary where each sentence was concise and only dealt with the direct storyline plots without much straying. The story changes was a defining characteristic of Wilson's version of Mahabharata because he does not have any supernatural aspects in the story and changes some plot lines in order to fit with a typical story of royal conflicts between regular, mortal people. For instance, in the original story, Draupadi is supposed to be a shared wife between the five Pandava brothers, but Wilson made it so she was only Yudhisthira's wife although it was Arjuna who won her in the first place.

For this week's storytelling, I was thinking about using the non-supernatural aspect of Wilson's story in retelling a specific part of Mahabharata. Here are some writing ideas:

A continuation of my story last week --> The Night I Gambled My Life Away <-- except now I can discuss how the family felt and how "Dominic" is their jealous distant cousin
Arjuna's perspective on how unfair it was that he won the contest yet Yudhisthira is the one who gets the girl (AKA Draupadi)
A background story on Duryodhana's jealousy and furiousness of the Pandavas
The perspective of Karna and Arjuna's mother on her two sons fighting without Arjuna knowing their blood relation