Giving Kids Relatable Heroes: The Role of Tricksters

This week we looked children heroes - tricksters who made up for their lack of size and brawn with brains and deceptions. To me, these characters’ main purpose is to provide relatability to small children, showing them how even when things seem hopeless, they can make their situations better. The heroes in these stories are children, but they still have power, and this is something that kids can connect to. From a psychological prospect, the tales highlight the importance of leaving home, leaving a place of safety in order to flourish, succeed, and create an individual identity. They allow the children to project their frustrations with their parents onto “evil” parent figures, allowing them to vent this angry in a safe and healthy way (through stories). Furthermore, the fantastical settings of the tales prove a sense of escapism, giving children a glimpse of a potential wonderful future in their lives especially since according the Tatar, the tales were written/told during times of “harsh realities.”

Kenyan Folktales: Storytelling that is Alive

I don’t know about anybody else, but I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture we experienced on Tuesday. Dr. K’Olewe was friendly, engaging, and interactive, and it was clear he was passionate about his culture and the tales that rise out of that culture. He was able to tell nine different stories in a short amount of time and connect them to the points he was trying to make about the storytelling tradition in Kenya.

What Dr.K'Olewe said his favorite tale was

So what made these stories so entertaining? What set them apart from other tales?

I think part of the reason the stories were so entertaining is because I’d never heard them before. This makes them quite unlike the stories we’ve read in class, all of which I have encountered in some form or another, and some of which I am very familiar with. When I was reading these stories, I was pretty sure how they were going to end. Sometimes the ending differed from my expectation which was surprising and refreshing, but that occurred rarely. But because I’d never heard of the Kenyan stories before, I waited with anticipation to know how all of them ended. I had no idea what the ending was going to be or how the beginning and the end would tie together into a message. This factor combined with the heart the tales were told with made hearing them fun and captivating.

The Importance of Luck: An Analysis of the "Rags to Riches" Motif

The “rags to riches” motif remains one of the most popular story-lines there is. Not only are there several versions of Cinderella in the contemporary United States (I’m personally partial to Another Cinderella Story) there are countless Cinderellas from other times and places. There seems to be an endless demand for the adventures of people who miraculously rise out of poverty and inexplicably also find their true love in the process.

But how feasible are these tales? Could a “rise-tale” become reality? Although the perpetuation of these films in our society seems to suggest people gain love and riches inexplicably almost every day (art is supposed to mirror life, after all), a person actual ability to go from a “nobody to a somebody” is more complicated than “Cinderella” implies it is.

Innocent or Not, She's Still Gotta Be Beautiful

Once again, it is remarkable to me that stories that tonally seem so different at first glance can be the same tale at heart. While the literary adaptations certainly paint a different picture of the titular hero, Snow White, their tales do bear many similarities to both the music video “Sonne” by Rammstein and the classic Disney interpretation of the story.

In all versions of Snow White that we have seen so far, the societal expectation that women should be beautiful shines through. In every story, Snow White’s main attribute is her physical attractiveness. Despite having different countries of origin, all the tales (and films) describe her beauty in almost exactly the same way: pale skin, dark hair, and red lips.

Is Being a Beast a Gift or a Curse?: Looking at the Characterization of the Beast in Two Contrasting Tales

We read many different versions of Beauty and the Beast (ATU 400 and ATU 425 according to Tatar) this past week, most of them stories I had never heard of before. Of these stories, two of them that I found most interesting were “The Pig King,” and Italian tale by Giovan Francesco Straparola and “The Swan Maiden.” Although these two stories are technically of different tale-types, I find their distinction between which identity is labeled the “beast” to be one that is very revealing as to society’s view of gender roles.

The characterization of the beast is vastly different in these two tales. In “The Pig King,” the male beast is depicted as horrific. He is a murderous monster, who even his parents don’t think will ever be loved. When his father first sees him, he thinks about killing him, putting him out of his misery, a dramatic example of how his animal-form is portrayed as a curse, as something undesired and hated. His pig-form is described as filthy and disgusting, and the beast has no control over when he transforms until he is no longer a pig when his curse lifts and sheds his skin.

A Calvin and Hobbes Spin on LRRH

Bill Watterson defies expectation yet again in his interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood. Published on February 2, 1986, the comic depicts Calvin’s father reading the tale as a bedtime story to Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin asks that the wolf in the story be changed into a tiger. Because of the transformation, the story also deviates from the Grimm Brothers’ typical ending. Instead of the wolf (tiger) being shot and killed, he eats both Little Red Riding Hood and the hunter, delighting both Calvin and Hobbes.

This story is a social cartoon, meant to entertain, but it also highlights important aspects of fairy tales. To Calvin, the story has a much different meaning than it does for other children. He relates to the beast so much so that he asks for it to be changed into the form of his friend (Hobbes) as well as that the ending of the story be altered, so that the wolf (tiger) is successful. To Calvin, the protagonist of the tale is the tiger, who simply acts as tigers do and eats his prey. Calvin is horrified at the idea of the tiger being shot, and his father, instead of trying to enforce a different message upon him, changes the tale to suit Calvin’s beliefs and needs.

I am a big fan of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. They remind me of fairy tales in that they have value for children and adults alike. I find this comic is particular really funny and entertaining because its ending is surprising, but even though Little Red Riding Hood and the hunter both die, the comic is wholesome, showing Calvin’s great innocence and imagination, his love for Hobbes, and his ability to connect to the stories he’s told in his own unique way. The shock factor is similar to that of Roald Dahl’s version of the tale, where Little Red Riding is transfigured into the wolf - she ends up wearing two wolf pelts and murdering an innocent pig for sport (not for protection). The shock-factor of the ending highlights how fairy tales can be interpreted in many different ways depending on the person and/or the time of when the tale is read.

Cartoonist: Bill Watterson; Comic Strip: Calvin and Hobbes; URL: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/02/02     

  

What is a Fairy Tale?

At this point in the course, we’ve talked for many hours about why fairy tales are important - how we can analyze them and what purpose they serve in our society. And so the question becomes: what exactly have we been talking about? What makes a story a fairy tale as opposed to just a tale? What qualifications set fairy tales apart from all other stories?


Fairy tales are powerful stories, stories that are for people of all ages. They are full of drama and intrigue, entertaining enough to keep a child’s attention and often triggering an emotional response. Most significantly, fairy tales are defined by their elements of magic. There must be some element of wonder or the fantastic in a fairy tale.