Ah, fairy tales. Dramatic and unrealistic tales of a quivering princess trapped in a tower, a strong and mighty prince comes and slays the dragon, saves the princess and brings peace to the kingdom, right? Not so much. Have you ever read a fairy tale before? I have, and I was surprised at what I read.
My favorite example of a fairy tale that isn't what you except is a quaint sounding one, The Dog and the Sparrow by Wilhelm Grimm. It begins with an abused dog who wasn't fed, and a sparrow. The dog was really hungry, and the sparrow helped him steal food from the marketplace. After they ate, the dog was tired and wanted to take a nap, so he did. The sparrow saw a cart approaching and warned the driver of the sleeping dog, but the carter continued anyway. He ran over the dog and killed him.
Happy, right? Well, not to brighten your day, but it gets worse. The sparrow is now outraged, so she goes and avenges the dog's death. She wrecks much havoc, and finally in the end, she kills the carter. It ends, "...and the sparrow flew quietly home to her nest." That's the end. Seriously.
I was surprised, to say the least. It was a terrible ending to a terrible story. The Twelve Dancing Princesses, my cousin's (and my) favorite Barbie movie was based upon a fairy tale. The movie was almost completely different than the story. Same with Briar Rose, the origins of Sleeping Beauty. It's so distorted from the original tale, I'm sure that if The Dog and the Sparrow was made into a movie, it would have a happy ending.
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ReplyDeleteCinderella was a lot different too. My cousin has an old Grimm Fairytales book, and it was much more violent than I thought it would be. I can imagine all the people who read the stories then watched the movies when they came out and were outraged at the inaccuracy (haha, me when I watched the Scorch Trials). Disney probably did it so it would be child-friendly though, which makes sense.
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