Week 2 Story: The Man in the Sun
The coal fire inside of the coal miner's home.
(You can read my updated and, in my opinion, much better version of this story in my Portfolio!)
There once was a little fire in a village that was always sitting on top of coal, burning all day and all night to keep the home of a coal miner warm. The little fire felt unfulfilled. He wanted to get out of that house, he wanted to see the world, and he wanted to live a life of comfort where he was not always burning hot. One day, he finally had enough and called out to his divinity. "Oh my divinity, I no longer want to be a fire. I feel like I have all of this potential energy and it is going to waste in this home, all I do is create a hazy smoke that has given my owner a terrible cough, and I can no longer bear the heat. I'm begging you to make me into a coal miner."
His divinity granted him his wish and turned him into a coal miner. Everyday, the coal miner would wake up at 4 AM and go toil away in the coal mines, returning home at the very end of day and going straight to sleep after he got home because he had to wake up early the next day to do it all again. One day, he went to the coal mine at the crack of dawn and he saw that its entrance had been boarded up with a sign on it that said "Due to insufficient funding, the mine will no longer be in operation". The miner went home confused and after living a week without a job and finally running out of all of the money and food that he had, he called out to his divinity. "Oh my divinity, I don't know what to do. I have no job or food and being a miner was too much hard work in the heat. I want to feel like I have a purpose. Make me into a form of energy where I can keep cool. Make me into one of those river dams that I pass by everyday when I go to work."
His divinity granted him his wish and turned him into a river dam. Years later, the river dried up. The dam no longer had a purpose and was rotting away in swampy conditions in the heat. "Oh my divinity, I feel useless! Make me into one of those boards that sucks up the sunlight to make energy that I see in the field over there." His divinity granted him his wish and turned him into a solar panel and the solar panel immediately regretted his wish, as he couldn't bear the heat beaming down on him everyday and he felt purposeless during the nighttime when he couldn't make any energy without the sunlight.
"Oh my divinity, I can't live this live in the sunlight or in the complete darkness at night. Make me into the sun, the source of all life on this planet." His divinity granted him his wish and turned him into the sun. Immediately, the sun felt the scorching heat of his being, knowing that he shouldn't have wished to be the sun. "Oh my divinity! Please change me into anything else! Make me into the fire that I was when you first changed who I am! This heat is too much. I feel it from the outside of my body to my inner core and I can see myself destroying regions in the world, as they are plagued with excessive heat, drought, and famine. I feel like this is all my fault and I don't want to be responsible for this!" His divinity said "You said you want purpose, so that is what you will have regardless of how you feel" and left him to be the sun to this day.
Author's note: This is my rendition of the Man in the Moon, although I focused on the coal fire wanting to be different types of energy because I study energy security and this story exemplifies some of the challenges of different types of energy sources.
Bibliography: The Man in the Moon. Story source: Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson.
I like your version of the story very much. All of those changes make sense in the story and also because of your major are very easy to relate to. I could recognize that I had heard a version of the story before, but yours made it unique enough that I had to get to the author's note to make sure where I had heard the story before. Very good work!
ReplyDeleteHi Arti Patel. I am very impressive with the way you create your own story. Although, i have read the plot of the story so many time before, your story is very fun to me since you use what you have learnt about energy sources to apply to the context. This framework appears a little bit like me when i was young. I wanted to be a doctor at first, then an actress, then a lawyer, now i am end up with a business woman's dream. I hope my life won't become that story again. ^.^
ReplyDeleteHello Arti, I thought your story was really great! I actually made a story about the Man in the Moon also, so it was great to see a different view on it. I thought your version was really cool, I liked how it was about the energies and its nice that you study that too. Overall your story was really great, keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteHello Arti, I remember reading this story in the beginning of the class (well, the original version of it) and I really enjoy your take on it. I like how you changed the characters in the story and how you kept the theme of fire and heat throughout most of them.
ReplyDelete- Anna Margret