Bluebeard

“The Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter reimagines the fairy tale “Bluebeard.” Her rendition creates more dimensional characters and builds stronger relationships by thoroughly detailing interactions. She uses thorough prose to explore the depth of a romantic relationship and its accompanying obligations. However, the central characters remain the same, and the plots mirror one another despite different settings. The timeline of events varies drastically, the period of a month condensed to two…

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the most influential American novelists of the twentieth century who has brought about a phenomenal distinction in literature. Most of the writers have written only in a particular concept or genre, but Kurt Vonnegut has imprinted his undeniable mark in science fiction with humor, social commentary with absurdity and so on. Kurt Vonnegut has written fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. His works are occupied with…

“Here is the solution to the American drug problem suggested a couple years back by the wife of our President: Just say no” (Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard). Crystal meth users in Hawaii is not a recent problem. It started in the late 1970s, but since then, the number of people smoking “ice” has steadily increased. In 2002, more than 2,730 people sought treatment for their crystal meth addiction (“Drug Epidemic”). Social workers have predicted that if crystal meth use keeps on increasing at the…

Fires’ influence in Richard Wright’s life and writings As evident in Richard Wright’s autobiography, Black Boy, fire is a symbol that has created an everlasting presence in his life and writing. Fire is used time and time again in Black Boy as imagery for turns in Wright’s life and as a recurring theme in his religious upbringing. It is clear that fire has become a part of how he identifies events and has been transposed into his writings. “Fire, which Keneth Kinnamon has described as “a…

breakdown? Lisbeth and “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” are all about the empowerment of women as a response to their exploitation. Cagney and Lacey just give an example of that exploitation. We had enough of that in Trifles and our variations on Bluebeard. Give us a text that shows us something and does something with it, not just one that shows us…

Who were the Grimm brothers and how did they affect fairy tale history? The brothers Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm were German folklorists and linguists, most famous for collecting fairy tales and other folklore. Born on January 4 in 1785 and on February 24 in 1786, they were the two oldest children of Philipp Grimm, a lawyer, and Dorothea Grimm. They have had a huge influence on fairy tale history. The brothers studied legal studies like their father, but were inspired by…

However, this is only half of the tale that these texts tell. BLOODY “Blackberry-Picking” is full of violent and bloody symbolism: Heaney writes, “summer’s blood was in [the berries] / leaving stains upon the tongue”. He also makes reference to “Bluebeard”, a French folktale about an gent who murdered a series of wives in a blood-stained room under his castle – in the same way that the blackberry-pickers hoard their bloody haul in a shed. Heaney’s references to ‘lust’ and ‘sweet flesh’ convey…

Harald Welzer identifies the divergence between official, public cultures of remembrance in Germany (the history of the Third Reich taught in schools, the establishing of Holocaust memorials, etc.) and private cultures of remembrance in Germany (multigenerational histories situated within family storytelling), evolving from his study of Western and Eastern German families through interviews, individually and collectively, regarding contextual, historical knowledge of the Third Reich and their…

Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle is a feminist metafiction novel; within its pages a collage of multiple narratives explore the gender politics of the world inhabited by its protagonist, Joan Delacourt / Foster. The novel starts at its end, Joan has faked her death in order to escape and create a new life. Beginning at the end implies this is Joan’s next novel, therefore the character representations are subject to her narrative position. Embedded within Atwood’s exterior narrative, Joan’s memory…

Transferring Power from Hero to Heroine Throughout literature and film, women are often portrayed in a distinct manner; subservient to men, naive, and powerless against the forces of evil. Childhood fairytales reinforce the idea that a woman’s duties are to take care of the home and children, and follow the rule of the husband. Women are portrayed as naive, fragile, and very innocent. Often times when that distinct line between innocence and adulthood is crossed, also known in fairytales as,…