Reading Notes: Twenty-Two Goblins (A)

Title: The Three Lovers
Author: Arthur Ryder
Link: Story link.


Plot:

• Three men fall in love with the beautiful Coral and each asks for her hand in marriage.
• She declines each of them, not wanting to hurt the feelings of the other two.
• Coral dies.
• Man 1 lives an ascetic life in the graveyard where she is buried, sleeps on her ashes and begs for food.
• Man 2 cleanses her bones in the Ganges River.
• Man 3 becomes a wandering monk and seeks out help.
• Man 3 finds a way to bring Coral back to life.
• King Triple-Victory decides that Man 1 deserves Coral, because he never left her side.
• This is complete garbage -- Man 1 did nothing at all. Coral is only alive because of Man 3, and Man 2 at least took action to honor her memory. Man 1 is a punk and does not deserve Coral. King Triple-Victory's head should have split for this answer.

Setting:

• India, on the banks of the Kalindi River.
• A small village called Thunderbolt.
• A graveyard, in which the girl is buried.

Characters:

• Man 1: Adopts a woe-is-me approach to dealing with his grief. 
• King Triple-Victory inexplicably decides that this guys deserves Coral's hand in marriage.
• Man 2: Dips Coral's bones in the Ganges. Not as effective as Man 3, but still taking action.
• Man 3: Single-handedly brings Coral back to life and then gets zero credit. This guy gets hosed.
• Coral: Beautiful, kind-hearted, virtuous. She doesn't marry any of the men because she doesn't want to offend the other two. 
• If she already didn't want to marry the men, it's probably not entirely fair to then force her to marry 

King Triple-Victory confronts the story-telling Goblin. Source: Wikipedia.

Writing Style:

• I like the choice to name the characters the literal translation of their names. It seemed a little bit stilted at first, but as I continued to read, it lent a more mythical quality to the characters. "King Triple-Victory" lets you know right away that this guy is imposing and in charge. 
• Seeing as the rest of the story is in pretty vanilla third person, this unorthodox style of naming is one of the most interesting features. You could really isolate key qualities of your characters by naming them things like "Courage" or "Folly". They stay generic enough to be relatable
• to all audiences and yet instantly convey their most important element to the reader.