Reading Notes: Week 2 Reading Anthology

 

Three Roses. Source: Pixy.

Story Source: The Key of Gold by Josef Baudis (1922).

    This story starts off with once upon a time, which I really liked. It makes it feel like a classic story. The characters in the story include three daughters, a mother, a basilisk, a long serpent that came from the body of the basilisk, and a beautiful youth, which is what the serpent turns into. The plot of the story starts off with the mother running to the market in the next town over. She was asked by the daughters to get some things for them. The youngest daughter Mary asked for three roses. The mother on her way back from the market gets lost. She finds a garden of roses by a palace in a forest and remembered she forgot Mary's roses. She picked three from the garden and a basilisk came and said she had to bring him one of her daughters as payment. The mother took Mary to the palace where she had to nurse the basilisk each day for three hours. Eventually, the basilisk has Mary cut his head off. A serpent comes out of the basilisk's body and holds golden keys to the palace in his mouth. Mary is asked to cut the serpent's head off, and when she does, it turns into a beautiful youth, who she ends up marrying.

    The story uses a lot of quotes of the things that the characters are saying, which I think is great. It makes you sort of feel like you are there in the story rather than just reading about it. The story is very descriptive and uses words such as yonder and dearly.

    I wish the ending of the story had a little bit more details. It does not talk about the wedding much. The youth that came from the serpent says to Mary, "I must marry you." Then, the story mentions there was a wedding that had activities such as dancing. I would have liked to hear a little bit more about what happened between the slaying of the head of the serpent and the wedding.