🪐The Story Struck Me Hard🪐

   Good Morning, good afternoon, good evening! Wherever you are, whenever you are reading this, I feel it is my sole duty to represent the intensity of this portfolio post in just the opening sentences. Now before I get into the nitty gritty, I would like to pleasure you with a clever pun. Enjoy…

What is the internal temperature of a Tauntaun?

Lukewarm 

   Diving into the details of this years Winter Exhibition we shall begin with our project launch and building of knowledge that lead us to an amazing final product! When we initially launched the subject of story telling and literature analysis I honestly didn’t expect for there to be an entire story writing, Star Wars extravaganza awaiting us on the other side. All expectations aside, we dove right in. Starting out with our first milestone, a simple opinion piece, the topic of which, “why is Star Wars still relevant in modern pop culture?” Our task was simply to identify an answer and support our reasoning and logic behind it. As this was our very first milestone, it was important to set the bar for myself and try my best as from there, I could only improve. I think that I did myself a solid in setting a standard that I needed to meet for each of the following steps and I feel that my works speaks for itself in this case.

   Advancing in our understanding of opinion and the importance and overall influence that Star Wars has over modern film and media, we stepped into the basics of story analysis. We began to spend classes discussing the ideas of literature and comprehending the terms used to describe different short stories we were assigned to read. In doing so, I found some of the fiction very interesting, especially that of Ray Bradbury’s, “The Veldt.” All of the stories we read were helpful components in identifying literary terms that would go into our short story charts. Eventually, the building knowledge lead to our final test on literacy analysis. This entire process was one of two vital steps in the completion of our short stories. 

   “The Hero’s Journey,” is a phenomenon in the world of storytelling that was proven and developed by a man named Joseph Campbell. Our example of The Hero’s Journey was the Star Wars saga and the trilogies within. The concept itself explains that all stories follow the same outline. Not exactly an unfamiliar idea but undeniably more complex than a simple beginning, middle, and end. The Hero’s Journey explains the story alongside the main characters development. Using Luke Skywalker as an example, the story begins with a call to adventure. Luke receives a message from Leia through R2-D2 and the story begins. When he complains that he is “late for supper,” he is simply refusing the call, which happens to be the second steppingstone in this storytelling chart. We worked with different examples of The Hero’s Journey over a couple of weeks and eventually were tasked with creating our very own story using it. 

   Our stories, what a subject! In order to not give every single student in my class a heart attack, we were divided into groups. The best part about this particular grouping was that each of the teams were assigned a planet. The Death Star, Endor, Tatooine, or Hoth. Each of these Star Wars planets are filled with seemingly unimportant characters and that gave us so much opportunity. Our initial task was to select an “unimportant,” character from our planet and tell their story. My group decided Hoth was our best fit and we started to brainstorm ideas for a character. When we researched all the scenes on Hoth from the Star Wars movies, we found one very important character that doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the role he played in the overall success of the Resistance against the Empire. This is a character like no other, a vital role in the survival of Luke Skywalker himself, Pudge the Tauntaun. No his name isn’t actually Pudge but this is our story so we named him what we felt was right. Now at this point in my seemingly never ending rambling session you may be confused as to what Pudge did to deserve so much credit. Well, do you remember that scene on Hoth in the Empire Strikes Back? The one where Luke is help captive by a giant abominable snowman, also known as a Wampa. Well if that doesn’t ring any bells  maybe the part where Han Solo slices opened a giant snow lizard horse thingy and stuffs a nearly frozen Luke inside for warmth will. Yeah that things that Han slices open, that’s Pudge. 

   Not to spoil anything, but my group, Meg, Felix, Julia, Angelo, Brenton, Kaden, and I all did an amazing job at creating a story, Pudge’s story and using The Hero’s Journey to do so. On a more reflective side of things, there are undeniably parts of our humanities portion that I could have done better at. Earlier I talked about setting a standard for myself with our first humanities milestone. I’d really like to say that I met that standard with everything but lets face it, I’d be lying to myself. I can confidently say that I worked on this story whole heartedly and it took time to build something that I was proud of, especially being the representer of the stories conclusion. With each group member writing one part of The Hero’s Journey being last was difficult considering that our main character literally dies at the climax. Okay, that’s enough spoilers! I’ll be explaining a lot more in the post linked below!

   Thanks for coming to tonight’s comedy special and we hope to see you again soon ✌️ 

   Click here for part 2! (I’m so sorry for how long these are, concise writing isn’t my strong suit)