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Reading Notes: Metamorphosis-Pygmalion


In the story Pygmalion, the title character creates a statue of ivory and falls in love with it. He prays to the gods to have the statue as his bride, and Venus, the goddess of love, hears his prayer.  She brings the statue to life for Pygmalion. He and the statue later have a son named Paphos. The story serves as an explanation for how the city Paphos got its name.

I think it will be important to keep the basic story structure the same in retelling it: a man creates an inanimate object, falls in love with it, and it is brought to life. I think it would be interesting to have the object changed in my story, though, possibly either by changing the material the statue is made of or changing it to an entirely new object, such as a painting.

The characters in the story all serve important roles, so I plan on keeping them all the same. Pygmalion is the reason the story has its name and is an important character in mythology. Venus is the goddess of love; the reason the statue comes to life is essentially because Venus loves love. It would not make sense to change the character that brings the statue to life to someone else or another god. The last character is the statue. Even if I change what the object is, the story centers around Pygmalion falling in love with an object, so it is important to keep this character.

One thing I would like to change in the story is the explanation behind the name Paphos. In the originally story, the explanation for why the city of Paphos has its name is one sentence stating the statue has a son named Paphos. There is no reason given for what the name means or why Pygmalion and the statue chose this name for their son. Also, the story ends very quickly and wraps up in only a few sentences. In the beginning of the story, there is far more description; it would be nice to see this continued throughout to the very end.

Story source: Metamorphoses by Ovid translated by Tony Kline
Pygmalion priant Vénus d'animer sa statue by Jean-Baptiste Regnault. Source: Wikipedia
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