The Plowman's Tale

The film Pan’s Labyrinth is not without its share of perilous moments. Throughout the duration of Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy opus, many dangers both real and supernatural are presented to the protagonists. These real and fantastical dangers can be personified in the characters Captain Vidal and The Fawn. Captain Vidal, the death-obsessed sociopathic step father of young Ofelia, directly terrorizes, tortures and kills many characters in the film. On the other hand, there is The Fawn. The…

Fairytales send subliminal messages to young girls that they must look and act certain way to be worthy of a man’s attention. These tales teach girls that finding a manpage 3 is the answer to all of their problems. Orenstein uses diction such as “conventional” and “perpetual” to illustrate her point that these beliefs are all too common and never ending. She indicates that this way…

Admirable stories possess the concept of the hero's journey. A hero's journey tells the character's story. In the story Cupid and Psyche, Psyche, a beautiful maiden, obtains Aphrodite's jealousy. Aphrodite makes her son, Cupid, affect Psyche's chance at love. Instead, Cupid falls in love with Psyche, and they face challenges attempting to uphold a relationship. The concept of a hero's journey explains Cupid and Psyche's story throughout twelve steps. Initially, the first step in a hero's…

Women’s Support for Patriarchy: When Things Fall Apart from Within In The Handmaid’s Tale, author Margaret Atwood argues that the success of patriarchy is built not only on the obedience of but also on the support from women, who are used as the most effective weapon against themselves. By depicting the Wives who seem to be adamant supporters of patriarchy but suffer as pathetic victims as well, the Aunts who brainwash the handmaids and also abuse them physically and mentally, and the working…

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian world of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale, we are introduced to a totalitarian world in which fertile women are captured and it is their duty to have children for elite couples. Throughout the novel, the primary handmaid and protagonist, Offred, reminiscences on her former life as she reveals the realities of her new life with a somber tone. I argue that Offred being stripped of her purpose and being suppressed into someone she is not intensifies her desire for…

Did you ever have the desire to do something, even though it felt wrong? In the fictional novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, by Margaret Atwood, the narrator lives in a dystopian world and gives her second thoughts about staying. Knowing that she will not go back to her old life, has her thinking about the decisions she will make. Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” shows that temptation leads to risky actions as shown through the narrator’s flashback, the foreshadow of the black van, and the…

short story is the folk tale or fairy tale, which derives from an oral tradition. “[…] Fairy tale motifs are […] ancient and appear in many pre-Christian epics, poems, myths, fables, histories and religious narratives.” (Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick, P 44) Aesop’s fables, for example, have been most popular in the Greece culture since the fifth century before Christ, though they are mere anecdotes with a moral to follow and less short stories like the fairy tale. Fairy tales similar to the ones…

A well-known villain to one of Disney's classics, “Sleeping Beauty”, has her own untold story composed into a unbelievable master piece. We are introduced to this familiar fairy tale in a new perspective. The tale begins in a peaceful forest realm called the Moors, where enchanted beings roam. One of these beings was a kind, young fairy named Maleficent, who cares for all life in the realm. One day, a young human boy named Stefan enters the mystical realm. He was avaricious and steals something…

constructed through the narrating of stories, the ambiguous nature of narrative is a position of real power to interpret history. In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, the author demonstrates the power of narrative through Offred’s resistance in a totalitarian regime that seeks to erase her individuality and, the loss of context when her tale is reconstructed by humanity. The author’s use and restriction of narrative in the Republic of Gilead demonstrates the attempt to establish…

Many artists in popular culture tend to incorporate fairy tale elements in their work. These elements can be found in work such as television, literature, art, advertising, etc. While “LITTLE RED CAP” and Taken differ in plots, Taken contains the fairy-tale elements of youthful innocence, and danger which are central to the fairy tale. The movie is about a seventeen year-old girl named Kim who gets kidnapped by the Albanian mafia and used for prostitution and woman trafficking along with other…