For Friday: Narayan, The Ramayana, Prologue-Chapter 2

NOTE: In the event that class is cancelled for snow on Friday, we'll pick this up the week after Spring Break. But do try to read it sooner rather than later--and hopefully, for Friday's class! 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: What makes Rama a unique hero even within the context of superhuman heroes like Achilles or Hercules? While all are somewhat divine,  how does Rama’s origin make him unique among Western heroes—and difficult to translate into our world/stories? Is it even fair to call him a hero given his unusual pedigree?

Q2: On page 16, Ganga explains to Rama that “Even after the participants have vanished, every inch of earth still retains the impress of all that has gone before. We attain a full understanding only when we are aware of the divine and other associations of every piece of ground we tread on.” Why might this be an important idea in this work, given what you've read so far? 

Q3: The Ramayana places a strong emphasis on duty or dharma, which can be translated as “the essential order of things, an integrity and harmony in the universe and in the affairs of life that cannot be disturbed without courting chaos. Thus it means rightness, justice, goodness, purpose” (Easwaran). Part of dharma is doing one’s duty and keeping’s one word at all costs. How does the story (so far) dramatize the struggle of doing one’s duty and obeying one’s station in life, even when to do so might otherwise seem ‘wrong’? Why is this notion of duty particularly tricky for Western readers?

Q4: Another often-translated Hindu concept is that of karma, which “can be translated as deed or action. The law of karma states that every event it both a cause and an effect. Every act has consequences…and every act, every karma, is also the consequence of some previous karma” (Easwaran). Related to question 3, how does the work dramatize the concept of karma in action? What characters are punished or rewarded according to their karma? Why might this, too, be a difficult concept for Western readers to grasp or appreciate?