Briar Rose Allegory

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Regardless of its context every text is reflective of the ways of thinking that shape an understanding of the values of the times. Jane Yolen’s novel, Briar Rose (1992) is an extended metaphorical representation of the horror of the holocaust through the allegory of the fairy-tale, Sleeping Beauty. Written in the 1990’s when the historical and cultural understanding of the holocaust was finally achieved, Briar Rose uses the allegory of the fairy-tale not only to blur the line between reality and the illusion, but as a portrayal of humanity’s resilience through didacticism. The horror of the Nazi genocide of World War 2 was only realised and brought to the world through the moral teachings expounded in a variety of texts. Similarly Terry George’s, Hotel Rwanda, (2004) re-enacts the events of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 that tore through the nation and shocked the world.…show more content…
Yolen reflects on the “mist”. The metaphoric allusion to the ‘great mist,’ heightens the illusion as it appears dreamlike. The mist is interpreted in many ways. It alludes to the gas from the gas chambers; and to the metaphor of death and also a way of blocking out the pain. Gemma wants to block out those painful memories and creates a mist to block out the reality. However, historically within the context of Hitler’s WW2 solution to ethnic cleansing shares similar ideas to the Rwandan ethnic cleansing of 1994. Hitler’s “gas chambers” of the concentration camps is symbolically euphemised as the mist of the sleeping beauty forest. A similar darkness permeates the film Hotel Rwanda, like many acts of genocide; the atrocities, darkness and despair are hidden from the world because of the lack of influence of the media. In the latter part of the 20th century the world became aware of the violence through
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