A Children's Story Naming has been an important aspect to the literal through-out this course. Joseph Jacobs turns the dark fairytale, Rumpelstiltskin, into a light hearted parody Tom Tit Tot. (920) In this rendition a little girls eats five pies and her entire life gets turned upside down. One may think the moral of this tale is to not eat all the pies or one might end up as a king's spinning housewife. Tom Tit Tot has a playful title which adds to the silliness of the entire fairytale and it’s even simple enough for a child to say. Jacobs takes strong elements, such as young marriage, forced slavery, and most importantly names and turns them into a happy-toned tale that is understandable to the younger audience. The very beginning of Jacob's …show more content…
Take note that throughout the entire story, none of the characters actually have a spoken name other than Tom Tit Tot. The 3 main characters are referred to as “the daughter” “the mother” and “the king”, (920-924) the author decided to do this because it shows the importance of Tom Tit Tot’s name and so the reader can only be focused on him. The quote “I’ll give you three guess every night to guess my name, and if you haven’t guessed it before the month’s up you shall be mine” (922) naming him releases her from their deal and without it she will be taken away by him. At the end she is able to learn his name and set herself free from his deal. The naming element is settle but, powerful. It allows the reader to understand that some as simple as name can lead to great power over someone. The daughter was able to earn back her life of riches just by learning the name of the …show more content…
Even though, these elements were dark for a child’s story, he was able to execute a silly tale about a pie eating daughter and the unrealistic expectation set for her by her mother. He was able to give nameless characters strong characteristics that they could have stand alone in the story and made the focus of Tom Tit Tot’s name more relevant. Jacob’s held up a mirror to parents to metaphorically steal their children's innocence away showing them the result of careless parenting choices. Also, he created an even darker image of the king, in the story, taking a child away from her family, manipulating her, and then forcing her to make skeins. Usually, a king, in this setting, is seen as the savior, that takes his chosen wife from evil doers. The adding of the musical element made the story more memorable and accessible to a younger audience. This isn’t just a story about eating your pie before dinner, in a hidden darker story about the effects of young marriage and the power of a name has over
Children are an important focus in both stories. Jackson makes it easy. for us to imagine their "boisterous play"(para 2), and Le Guin writes "their" high calls rising like swallows crossing flights over the music and the singing"(para 1). I see these children being used to symbolize perceived states. of happiness in both stories.
Throughout the years, the story of Cinderella has changed as different authors, including the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney have weaved their perspectives, morals, and agendas into their retellings. Just as varying rhetors can ha...
The simplicity, linearity and one dimensionality of fairytales have led to the belief in there allegorical nature, a conviction that fairytales mean something quite different from what stands in the text. As with most literary works there is deeper meaning in fairytales than just meets the eye. Little Red, the Wolf, and Grandmother are all one-dimensional characters. The illustrations are simple and sweet. No one character has more emphasis than the other and the focus is on the highly symbolic language, images.
High school students in many American schools first read this book in an English class, which has been a staple for many schools. A required reading assignment exposes many more people to the book. Even though the book is considered to be a children’s book by many, it is still enjoyed by people of all ages.
The story of Rumpelstiltskin has been told and retold for more than 4,000 years. Like many fairy tales, Rumpelstiltskin is a story that is without a character that can be defined as pure or innocent. Most versions of the story include two obvious and one ambiguously wicked character. The vaguely evil character comes in the form of the father who lies and parades his daughter like the incompetent object. As a result, he gets her into trouble with the King, a greedy man who cares about nothing but the gold he can get out of the miller’s daughter. Ultimately the only female character in this fairy tale is forced into an inescapable predicament by the two men in her life that she should have been able to trust above anyone else, her father and her future husband. This demoralizing role that females play in most fairy tales were given to them by
In this discourse, we will concentrate on Cinderella with the lyrics from “On the steps of the Palace”. Cinderella family went to the King’s festival and her thought to visit her mother’s grave for guidance. Her mother’s spirit offered her a gown and golden slippers, Jack on the other hand met a man who discouraged him from selling the milk for a sack of beans, the man vanished after. Little Red Ridinghood met a hungry wolf that confused him to accompany him after eating his grandmother.
When the word “fairytale” is mentioned, nearly everyone thinks of light-hearted stories with friendly characters and happy endings. However, these are not the ideas that classic fairytales originally sparked. In fact, numerous modern Disney movies were based off stories that were not so sugar coated. In the 19th century, the Brothers Grimm were responsible for multiple of these popular children’s tales. The Disney remakes of classic fairytales such as Cinderella, Tangled, and Snow White exclude the dark, twisted themes that are significant in the Brothers Grimm fairytales, because society tendencies continue to evolve toward sheltering and overprotecting young children.
The German folktale The Three Spinners, written by brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, relates to the oppressive burden of physical work, often endured by the poor peasants, whereas, the English folktale Tim Tit Tot, written by Joseph Jacob, relates to an old superstition that knowing someone’s name gives you an advantage over the other person
Sipe highlights five different expressive engagements—dramatizing, talking back, inserting, and taking over—that children portray during story book read- alouds. He believes that teachers must encourage these behaviors in children because it shows participation and it inspires children to take over the story. Some of these expressive engagements are reasonable while some serve as a disfavor to children’s learning. On page 482, he gives instruction on how teachers can implement the expressive engagements in their classroom. Sipe claims, “the first type of expressive engagement, dramatizing, can be encouraged through dramatic reenactment” (481). This can be problematic for fairy tales such as “The Juniper Tree”. This story about a stepmother killing her stepson by beheading him then cooking him in a stew, and a little boy turned into a singing bird who then later kills his murderer by “…dropping a millstone on her head and crush[ing] her to death” (252) can be gruesome for children to dramatize. Another expressive engagement that Sipe mentions is “inserting”. Sipe claims that if children are encouraged to insert themselves or other people around them into the story that they are reading, they can exercise their power over the tales. Through this process, Sipe claims “children in process of becoming one with the story, to the extent of assuming their stance as fellow characters with equal agency and presence in the story” (478). The story of the little boy in “The Juniper Tree” suggest a different view about mechanically inserting characters in a story. The little boy must learn about what each of his family members did to contribute to his death. When the little boy died, he did not know anything about the causes of his death and the things that happened after. He had to learn that his “mother, she slew [him]”, his father
Fairy tales are one of the longest lasting forms of literature. Though now they bring to mind classic movies engendered by Disney, many of these stories were first passed on in an oral manner, meant to convey a message, moral, or lesson. Alison Lurie’s “What Fairy Tales Tell Us” covers a broad range of classic tales, discussing how under the guise of an entertaining story comes life lessons we would all do well to follow. To begin this paper, some of the tales Lurie examines in her article will be looked at and critically examined beyond what she discusses. This will then move the text towards its remaining sections, which will take Lurie’s ideas and have them applied to folk and fairy tales that have not yet been contemplated; for the purpose
At first glance, what makes a fairy tale a fairy tale may seem obvious—some kind of magic, hidden symbols, repetition, and of course it’s evident it’s fiction—but fables are more than that. As Arthur Schelesinger puts it, it’s about “[expanding] imagination” and gaining understanding of mysterious places (618). While doing this, it also helps children to escape this world, yet teach a lesson that the reader may not be conscious of. A wonderful story that achieves all of this is Cinderella, but not the traditional tale many American’s have heard. Oochigeaskw, or The Rough-Faced Girl, and Ashputtle would be fitting for a seven-year-old because they get the gears of the mind turning, allowing for an escape on the surface, with an underlying enlightenment for children of the ways of the world.
As the world has transformed and progressed throughout history, so have its stories and legends, namely the infamous tale of Cinderella. With countless versions and adaptations, numerous authors from around the world have written this beauty’s tale with their own twists and additions to it. And while many may have a unique or interesting way of telling her story, Anne Sexton and The Brother’s Grimm’s Cinderellas show the effects cultures from different time periods can have on a timeless tale, effects such as changing the story’s moral. While Sexton chooses to keep some elements of her version, such as the story, the same as the Brothers Grimm version, she changes the format and context, and adds her own commentary to transform the story’s
The simplicity of fairy tales and non-specific details renders them ideal for manipulation allowing writers to add their own comments often reflecting social convention and ideology. Theref...
As many of us know, our world today is not short of sarcasm. Many times sarcasm can be funny but other times it can cause harm. But in Anne Sexton’s poem, she uses sarcasm to throw her audience back to actuality, even a midst a fairytale element. In Anne Sexton’s poem, Cinderella she uses sarcasm and a basis of the true tale to make what many would call a “mockery” of the original Grimm Tale. Sexton does not refer to the Grimm brothers in her poem, for she considers this re-telling her own creation, uniquely by using irony to her advantage. As an audience we can relate to how and why Sexton takes much from the original versions, but we find that her interpretation brings a different approach. Sexton felt the original versions held no light to reality, so she changed the shallow premise of the original Cinderella bringing all the unrealistic morals in the story to the surface. The author's style, tone, and language helps to convey her sarcastic approach and differentiate between gritty reality and the ideal of fairy tale endings.
Fairytales and folktales have been told around the campfire, in the living room, the class room, and before bedtime for centuries. First told orally, the “… stories had to have remarkable features in order to remain memorable (Nodelman 246).” These stories were passed down from storyteller to audience until they were eventually written down and collected for consumption by the public. Due to the passing of time and fallibility the stories have changed throughout the years and slightly differ from culture to culture, however, “Stories similar to “Cinderella” can be found in historical records from as far back as the seventh century, and from a variety of places around the world (Nodelman 246).” Although the classic tales differ in various ways from their modern counterparts (such as Disney films, etc.), the characters and their journeys are still very much identifiable.