Week 5 Planning: Why Ravana Captured Sita

Sita Sings the Blues:

Story  Notes:
***I watched the video, Sita Sings the Blues this week. The video was very vague in regard to the actual story, so I used the summary of the Part A video. My research consisted of looking into Ravana deeper, since my idea for this story is to put it into his perspective. I started by looking up the original story of Sita's capture and focused my attention on Ravana. I wanted to know more about, to try and get a picture of him personally before making changes to his character.

• This is basically a shortened, way less detailed version of the Ramayana mainly focusing on Sita. In the original story, I always liked Sita and wanted to change it up a little bit this week so I decided to go with the video. The part that I want to focus on for a story this week is the part where Ravana captured Sita. Last week, I retold the story of Sita while she was in captivity and I told it in her perspective. This week, I think it would be neat to use the part when she was captured by Ravana and put it in his perspective. The video itself is very vague on why Ravana wants to capture Sita, so I think this would allow me to get very creative when writing the story in his perspective. The video says that Ravana was a good King and it seems like the only bad thing he did was capture Sita. I did not get this vibe from the book. This part confused me because I got the impression that Ravana was a god of demons, but the video made it sound like he was a good guy. I want to change this part of the story, put it in Ravana's perspective and maybe answer some of the blanks that the book left me with about Ravana. I think by putting this story in Ravana's perspective I will be able to be creative and explain why he decided to take Sita. Where Sita and Ravana childhood friends and Ravana was secretly in love with her? Was there some old rivalry between Ravana and Rama that would make him want to steal his wife? I feel like there is a lot of options when it come to retelling this story.
• Princess Sita's Kidnap:
• Since the video was vague on the actual details of Sita's capturing, I decided to start with the whole story. In this version of the story, it describes Ravana as the King of Demons, who had 10 heads and 20 arms. This is where the video confused me. It said that other than capturing Sita, Ravana was a good King who praised Shiva. I figured this was just a creative discrepancy. The story continues and says that Ravana spied Sita in the forest and instantly fell in love with her. Ravana then ordered a servant to disguise themself as a golden deer in ordered to draw Rama and Lakshman away from Sita. During this time, Lakshman drew a circle around Sita to protect her and told her not to leave the circle. To draw Sita out of the circle, Ravana disguised himself as a beggar and went to Sita and begged. Sita with a big heart took pity on the "Ravana" and that is when he swept her away. In the video it said that Sita threw her necklace to the ground so Rama could save her
• I really think this would be a cool story to retell in Ravana's perspective. Since there is a discrepancy in his actual identity and personality, I feel like this would be the best way to define him. Having this background refreshed, I feel like it would make an interesting story.
• Ravana- The Great Scholar
• In this article, it discusses the identity of Ravana. I feel like in all the stories, I never really got a clear picture of who Ravana was, so that is what lead me here. This source says that Ravana was a scholar and believed in the hindu gods Lord Shiva and Lord Brahma. 
• This source says that since birth Ravana was a follower of Lord Vishnu, (Rama was Lord Vishnu's avatara). At sometime during his life, Ravana has upset Lord VIshnu and the only way to earn salvation was to get killed by his avatara, Rama. It also said that he was a good king, so he did something that he knew would get him killed by Rama, which was kidnapping his wife.
• Bibliography: "Sita Sings the Blues," a film by Nina Paley

Picture of Ravana.
Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia