Grimm's Fairy Tales

The Darkness and Sorrow of Pan’s Labyrinth Today’s fairytales are often transformed into morality tales to fit our current values and are often stripped of the darkness and sorrow that is surrounding the story. However, this is not a common occurrence and it has been done over years, so that the more gruesome fairytales, with dark, and gruesome scenes, would be more suitable for younger audiences. In “Pan’s Labyrinth” Guillermo Del Toro is able to incorporate those gruesome and darker scenes to…

In Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretations of Dreams, he spoke of the Oedipus Rex, which is also known as the Oedipus complex. Where in most cases the son kills off the father in order to marry and get with the mother (Freud, 816). Freud believes that all men have these desires in their id but their superego ends up compressing these thoughts. The reason for this is because society rejects these impulses and so we must learn control our urges. Notice how, in the last sentence instead of placing a…

Fairy Tales are written with a purpose to entertain, mimic life situations, assist as a guide and to teach life lessons. However, in today’s modern society, original fairy tales are transformed into non-sequiturs in order to convey present day messages. In the original version of the Little Red Cap, the symbolism and messages are used to educate and be more direct towards children. The non-sequitur version of the Little Red Cap focuses more on modern problems people may face in today’s world.…

A common fairytale motif is that of the evil stepmother, in such tales as Aschenputtel, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and The Almond Tree. A character whose main purpose is to oppose the hero/ heroine at all costs, the polar opposite of our main character. This polarization is essential for us to understand the goodness of the hero, to want them to succeed, and to see how good triumphs over evil. The most thought of evil-stepmother is that of the Queen in Snow White. This character is…

I believe that the poem tells a Muggle fantasy tale rather than showing that Muggles had any knowledge of a magical creature. Yes, Erl means elf and Erklings are related to House Elves and both Erklings and the Erlking in Goethe's poem attack children, but the similarities end there. The names of the two creatures are spelled differently. The creatures in the lesson are Erklings, whereas the creature in the poem was THE Erlking. One word can be transformed into the other by transposing two…

Ashenputtel is an original German folk tale. The German folk tale was written in 1857 by the original Grimm brothers. The Grimm brothers have written over 200 tales and many are famous around the world, including: Aschenputtel, Die Gansemagd, Hansel und Gretel, Rumpelstilzchen, Dornroschen, Schneewittchen and many more. The Grimm brothers not only wrote German folk tales they also wrote well-known mythologies. Additionally, the stories were originally not even or children, although they become…

Substitute Child Over time, fairy costumes have been used by children on the day of Halloween and while playing pretend. Children wanted to become fairies for a day; however, little do these children know that some fairies had the intent to become the children themselves. During the medieval times, a “Changeling”, they would call themselves, were fairies that wanted human attention and affection. The changeling would be put in place of a human child to act as if it were real human being. The…

Although these three stories all of the Godmothers are different, the Aschenputtel story has birds, Yeh Shen has fish spirited bones, and the Algonquin Cinderella doesn’t have a fairy godmother. differences in the Cinderella stories is with the stepmother and the stepsisters, in the poem the stepmother makes it look like Cinderella doesn’t know what she is talking about. Fineally, at the ending of all the Cinderella stories are…

Today, the two of the most notable versions of the story of the Beauty and the Beast are Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête (1946) and the Disney animation Beauty and the Beast (1991). They are based on a French tale regarding a woman who becomes in love with a beast. Both films have their similarities and differences, but they were made for different audiences. Jean Cocteau’s film stars Jean Marais as the Beast and Josette Day as Beauty. It is recognized as a classic to French cinema and was…

Disney films are portraying their characters beautiful to set impossible standards of beauty. Snow White and the seven dwarfs by Walt Disney promotes impossible standards as well as other films. Issues with with Disney films promoting impossible standards of beauty are that when kids see these beautiful princesses and princes they want to be just as beautiful like them. The other side of this argument would be that Disney movies do not promote impossible standards of beauty. There are three…