Week 11 Story: Grum Learns a Lesson
Grum would catch things falling before they squashed these little people. To Grum, the little people looked helpless. Grum had learned his manners from a wise old man who had found him as an infant in the mud outside the village.
Grum had been taught to treat everyone well with respect and no one would ever think anything of his size. But one day, Grum was visiting his friend Argoy. Grum understood Argoy better than anyone, but the old wise man had believed Grum was meant to understand elephants.
As Grum was visiting with Argoy like so many times before, a group of little people wandered nearby. They didn't notice Grum and Argoy and began to talk amongst themselves. They spoke of murder and hatred. Grum's ears were full of awful things but he began to ponder what these things meant.
Grum left Argoy and burdened by these ideas, he stopped to pick up a small boy. He began to squeeze him with his large fist. He could feel the body of the little one begin to crush. He thought that odd and let go. The little boy went crashing to the ground close to death.
Word spread quickly through the village to be careful of Grum, and word spread to the wise old man. Out of his house, he came quickly. He found Grum and asked him what had happened. The giant broke down and cried telling his old caretaker of the awful things he had heard and how he tried to understand them.
The caretaker shook his head and began to softly explain to Grum that these men were not good and needed to be stopped. Grum nodded and then asked about the little boy. The old man told him he had nearly killed him but there was still hope and breath within his tiny lungs.
From that day forward, Grum watched out for nasty men with hatred in their hearts. He kept the little people safe of corruption and meanness. The villagers learned to trust him again and came to him when bitterness welled up in their hearts. Grum spoke soft words and softened their bitterness and they all lived happily.
Author's Note: I don't have any idea where I got this whole idea so different from the story I read. It was definitely inspired by it. I had an elephant as in the original, but my elephant was a friend and minor character. I kept the moral of the story and that's about it. I usually don't write the third person like this, but that's what happened. At some point, I thought of Gulliver's Travels and that added some inspiration to the story, but overall it just came as I wrote. I hope you enjoyed it, I definitely enjoyed writing it. Also, the names are entirely made up and I imagined the wise old man looking like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings.
Story Source: The Elephant Girly-face by Ellen C. Babbitt
Aleshia, I really enjoyed your story. I though it was easy enough to read and the flow was really good. I could tell that you had some inspiration from Gulliver's Travels and I think you did an excellent job at it. I enjoyed the Grum character and I thought his character progression went really well with the story. Good job and I can't wait to read more of your stories.
ReplyDeleteHi Aleshia. You did a great job writing your story! I really enjoyed reading it! You were very creative taking some ideas from old literature. It takes a truly thoughtful mind to come up with something like that. There were a lot of stories I have found to be pretty boring, but you did a great job with yours! Good luck for the rest of the semester!
ReplyDeleteAleshia,
ReplyDeleteI like Grum. Your description immediate calls to my mind the kind of character you would find in a Pixar short. Halfway through the story, I was afraid that the village was going to treat Grum like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, but then I recognized that you were re-telling the story of Girly-face. Good job on a clean concise story.