Fairy Tales In Burn Your Maps

Katelyn Matroni

Professor Torrence

English 102

February 12th, 2014

Meaning of Life

According to Bruno Bettelheim, in Introduction: The Struggle for Meaning taken from The Uses of Enchantment, the use of fairy tales in a children’s life allows them to deal with their fears in a symbolic way. In order for a story to hold a child’s attention it must “help him to develop his intellect and to clarify his emotions”(263). The use of fairy tales in Burn Your Maps, by Robyn Joy Leff, portrays the subtle but important influence of fairy tales on a child.

Bettelheim’s idea of fairy tales states that a child gets a better understanding of life through fairy tales. In Burn Your Maps, nine year old Wes is constantly surrounded by two fighting parents. Alise, Wes’ mother, institutes a fine set of rules including restrictions on certain TV shows and a bed time curfew. Alise states that she has “spanked him many times, but never with premeditation.”(299) Personally, I was never hit as a child, but from my own observations of friends that were spanked in attempt to conform them, they almost always reacted in a negative way. There is nothing children hate more than disciplinary action, especially when taken form in a physical manner. Wes, and other children alike, may get the sense that the only way to get revenge against their parents is to rebel. Thus, the use of fairy tales may not be as dramatic as in other stories, but the idea of Wes taking the role of a Mongolian is essentially a fairy tale to him. Although Wes is a disturbed child, he uses his own sense of fairy tales to escape the reality of his unstable home and disciplinary actions.

Wes’ father, Connor, is constantly stressed about his son becoming “wacky”. Alise, on the other hand ...

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...ly lives in a house where there are very few rules due to his unstable parents. To correct this, he puts himself in a Mongolian culture which consists of many sets of rules and obligations. Bettelheim would encourage Wes to live the life of a Mongolian for a short time, because it gave meaning to his life. If Wes and Bettelheim were to talk, Bettelheim would discretely find out why it is that Wes wanted to become a Mongolian yak herder. In due course, Bettelheim would wean Wes off of the imaginary world of a yak herder and eventually help him to come to a realization of what was really bothering him. Bettelheim would most likely do this by exposing Wes to other sources of fairy tales, tales in which Wes would be able to place himself inside the hero. It would allow Wes to see the ups and downs of life, and learn how to conquer and overcome what was given to him.