After reading the Grimmis' fairy tale

  First and foremost,the tales don't go in any particular order, so feel free to skip around. That being said, a lot of the better-known tales are clustered in the beginning, so keep that in mind as you poke around.

  The protagonists are the downtrodden, the innocent, and mostly young characters. You know 'em when you see 'em: youngest sons and daughters, orphaned kids, usually clever, sometimes adorably naïve. If you're a girl, it helps to be beautiful, patient, and domestically skilled, because, gee, how else would you nab yourself a husband? If you're a guy, you'd better be aggressive and paranoid, because your brothers will try to leave you in a ditch or poke out your eyes or otherwise dispose of you. There aren't a lot of king's daughters to go around, you know.

  Usually what gets the protagonist from awful to awesome is the intervention of a helper figure. We're not just talking fairy godmothers, either. For example, if you bury a dead dude then his ghost will totally help you out when you encounter roadblocks. Being nice to animals also does the trick. And if you're lucky, you'll get yourself a talking horse who helps you figure stuff out. 

  What are these assorted helpers' motivations for being nice? Sometimes they're enchanted or disguised and hoping they'll get a favor in return. Sometimes they're the spirit of a dead relative or a representative of God. Wherever they come from, do not tick them off, because they're usually crazy-powerful, and do not suffer jerks. 

So that's the gist. Most tales follow the formula of downtrodden hero + helper + trials - antagonist = happy ending. But some, especially the tales with animal protagonists or those that dwell on clever peasants, read like lengthy narrative jokes or picture books for kids. That's okay, too. Keep an eye out for some kind of power exchange or trickery, because fairy tales generally are often about the tensions between high and low social status, youth and maturity, and men and women. In other words, someone's gonna get ahead somehow, usually at someone else's expense. Which is a great message to be sending kids, right?

2019-12-09

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