Structure of Story - Ramayana And Mahabaratha as example

One thing about the structure that we discussed in the previous post is that it applies to short story to a great extent. In novels, because of the size, they can deviate to a good extent.

Ramayana and Mahabaratha are two great epics and are as large as they can go. So it does not come as a surprise that they stick in a loose manner to the structure we discussed in the previous post.

If you take the beginning, You can see Mahabaratha does not introduce Pandavas and Kauravas in the first few chapters. Instead it sets up the scene with Devadutta becoming Bhishma. Ramayana also starts somewhat early in the time. In fact, it does not bring Ravana well into the middle of the story. So it is a slow read in that sense.

How do the epics fare in the middle? Mahabaratha is probably better than Ramayana. You can see the enmity between Pandavas and Kauravas being set up. Kauravas try to
outsmart Pandavas many times (not always legal or moral). But Pandavas manage to come out better and gaining strentgth in that process. Ramayana is a bit of letdown, if I may say so. Rama and Bharatha go on vanvaas and the reader (along with story) is lost in the jungle till Ravana comes along.

End - Both epics have war as the climax. Well, not exactly. Mahabaratha devotes some chapters to rounding off the characters (including krishna) after the war. So does Ramayana in the coronation of Rama. You can see that the end is somewhat stretched.

One reason that our epics dont exactly fit to the structure that we have discussed earlier is that these epics are probably not written by one author but has formed and changed as it passed from generations to generations. Another reason could be that these stories are so old, that people didn't have any idea about the rules of the stories at all. Quiet obvious,right? Looking from that perspective, you can see how amazing stories these epics are. They have all the characteristics of great stories. And they were written before people understood what makes great stories.