As we discussed in class, book 3 can basically be summed up in one sentence: Rama hunts a magical dear, meanwhile Ravana swoops in and kidnaps Sita. Since the book itself is more or less "simple" I will focus on the concepts found within the literature instead. One such concept we discussed in class was this idea of the perfect guy or the perfect girl. Personally, I believe that one of the purposes behind the Ramayana itself is to "educate" people on how they should be. Sita and Rama serve as paragons for the Indian culture, and more likely, nearly every culture. They represent so many positive attributes, many of which we talked about in class, such as: loyalty, beauty, strength, kindness, calmness, etc. What I find really interesting about these models of perfection is how much the "model" can vary depending upon which gender it is coming from. To me, it seems that when a gender is asked to identify the "perfect individual" for the other gender, they base the majority of their reason on physical attractiveness. This was very easily seen in class when opposite genders merely selected good looking role-models for each other. However, when a gender is tasked with defining their own role model, they typically choose a model that is well respected, powerful, influential and important, not merely beautiful. So, when we look at the Ramayana, we can see that each gender has been specifically "assigned" a model that they should follow. Much like superheroes, Rama and Sita have become tools to enlighten people on how they should act, and what they should strive to become as human beings. Well now that I've begun to dabble in the topic of superheroes, lets head that way. Is Rama a super hero? In all honestly, I don't think we've actually read enough to answer that question. So far, we really haven't seen any notable behavior from Rama thus far, so deciding whether or not he is a superhero is going to have to wait.
Another thing I want to talk about is this idea of obligate sympathy that the reader experiences while reading the Ramayana. The reader begins to actually sympathize with Ravana, even if it is for a very small time. We see how badly Ravana wants Sita, and how "in love" he has become with such a beautiful woman, and although we realize that he is the "bad guy" we do understand him for a moment. Its this concept of relate ability that allows the audience to dig deeper into the character and their motives. One good example of this is the movie Law Abiding Citizen. In the movie, Gerard Butler's family is murdered so he sets up a plan for revenge. While executing the plan, he gets carried away and begins to kill innocent people. Although the audience knows that Butler is supposed to be the "bad guy" they sympathize with him because his family was murdered. By the end of the film, you cant decide whether you support Butler or you don't. This is essentially what happens in book 3, or t least until Ravana kidnaps Sita... This action is pretty much the defining moment for Ravana and it serves as a confirmation of Ravana's evil intent. As I discussed in an earlier post, it's also funny to think that our perspective is what truly defines the moral actions within a story. Well, perhaps not kidnapping, but say that Rama was labeled the "bad guy", then Ravana kidnapping Sita would have been a heroic act. However, since Rama has already been established as the "good guy" anything that goes against him will inevitably be considered wrong or evil.
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