So this was the end of the Ramayana—at the
least short version of it anyway. The fight scene was very long and dramatic,
which made me curious to see what the original will be like! Of course our protagonist,
Rama, won and the evil Ravana was defeated. Ravana’s brother took over as ruler
of Ravana’s kingdom, which was pretty cool since his brother had turned to the
side of Rama and the monkeys. I was a little skeptical of this however, because
although the brother did not agree with Ravana’s choice to kidnap and imprison
Sita he never interfered in these actions. In the end, he only fled and helped
Rama because Ravana kicked him out of their side. He would not have helped to
save Sita in any way—in my opinion—were it not for his exile, which did occur
due to his speaking out against Ravana’s actions, in his defense.
My least favorite scene in the entire epic
came at the very end. This was when Sita attempted to immolate herself due to
Rama’s rejection. This irritated me for two reasons: Sita should value herself
as a person beyond being Rama’s partner and Rama should also not have held Sita
to such an unfair standard. Sita was strong-willed, yes. But had Ravana not
suffered from a curse that prevented him from touching an unwilling woman, Sita
would have been raped long before Rama’s arrival. In that case, she would not
have passed Rama’s test and would have been burned to death and forever kept
from Rama. This is an unrealistic, sexist, patriarchal standard and I am not a
fan of it. It seems to me that the older the religion, the worse the outlook is for the women. I will say though, this tells me nothing of how Hinduism regards women today, and it is the oldest religion on Earth, after all. I'll keep my hopes held high, for now.
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