Week 9 Story Planning: Laotzse

Bibliography: The Monkey King unit. Story source: "The Ape Sun Wu Kung: Laotzse" in The Chinese Fairy Book, ed. by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens (1921).

Summary of the original story:
Okay so first he's already in another form, a peach-worm to be exact, and he's just eaten all the fruit in the garden that's going to make him immortal.

Visitors come on an errand from the Queen-Mother and he traps them then changes his form to sleep worms and puts all the cup-bearers to sleep so he can drink the precious nectar.

Gets to the dwelling of Laotzse but no one is home so he drinks the elixir of life and swallows all the pills of life as well and then flees because he is afraid of getting in trouble.

Finally, he goes back to the scene of the crime and grabs more barrels of the elixir to share with his family.

Research on Laotzse:

Laotzse's character reminded me of Hypnos from Greek Mythology. He and his twin brother, Thantos, are often paired together and live next to the river styx. His attributes include a horn of sleep-inducing opium, a poppy-stem, a branch dripping water from the river Lethe (forgetfulness), or an inverted torch. Both Laotzse and Hypnos serve important roles in protecting things that mere mortals should not be in possession of. Both also fail to keep things out of the hands of those who should not have them (of course I'm basing that assertion on the Percy Jackson series and not straight up research). Actually, Hypnos uses his powers of sleep to trick Zeus twice and manages to get away with it whereas Laotzse get's his magic pills stolen from him while he's at a meeting with literally all of his servants... I don't know why he didn't leave anyone to guard his hut. Especially with a crazy, somersaulting through the sky, want-to-be-god, monkey on the loose.

(Hypnos: Image source)

Conclusion/Planning:
I would like to implement more elements of what the pills of life looked like and maybe make getting them a bit harder. I would also like to implement elements of Hypnos. I'm thinking I'll have the monkey get caught by a guard and then Laotzse will have him help trick another god or something to make up for eating all the pills and stealing barrels of elixir.



Information sources:
Hypnos
Hypnos information about Zeus