GRST 3311: Fairy Tales Final Project, Spring 2014 Topic: Address the controversy about fairy tales as ideal tales for children or as troublingly adult tales strangely adapted through history. If you were a teacher, would you use these tales? Which ones and why? What moral, cultural, and literary issues would impact your decision? Include a close reading of at least one tale as evidence for your thinking and do solid research about this debate in educational circles!
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.
As the reader you’re also being told the story of Victor Frankenstein. The connection between Walton and the reader is simply that they’re learning a lesson through Victor Frankenstein’s story. Mary Shelley, set up this novel to teach the reader a lesson through Walton. At the time this novel was written, Realism and Naturalism were slowly creeping upon the decade. During the Realism and Naturalism times scientific experiments and industrial movements were approaching.
Readers around the world have focused their attention to the most famous books like, the Harry Potter Series or maybe even The Davinci Code. Some do not realize that books that are not really conversed about are the most interesting. Harry Potter and The Davinci Code may be very entertaining books since one focuses on the supernatural and the other religion, but neither books talk about past, “deep” history. Two books that do go back to historical facts are Night and When the Emperor Was Divine. The New York Times has said that the novel, Night, was “A slim volume of terrifying power.” The Los Angeles Times has also said that, When the Emperor Was Divine, is, “a gentle, understated novel…has more power than any other I have read about this time.” Both reviews express that the two novels express some type of strong emotion that impacts the readers and also the reviewers.
And the only key difference I could find was that as I mentioned before, the book is non-fiction while the movie is fiction. When reading the book it has a more serious tone and it is meant to be helpful towards the reader, while the movie Mean Girls is humorous and not very serious at all. While it does have a good moral it is still a completely made up story based only on various chapters and sections of Wiseman’s book. The first and most important similarity I noted was the chapter on cliques. In Mean Girls cliques are a key theme throughout the movie.
This is shown through the use when Yolen symbolism throughout the novel. When yolen uses symbolism is because she wants to engage the reader to enhance the meaning of the narrative beyond what is described. 'The Bad Fairy' this quote engage with the reader that it is a metaphor about Gemma's past experience in Chelmon. Furthermore into this, Yolen also describe the nazi soldiers that cause the death toward the vitmin of the holocaust. Similarity to this, yolen uses visual imagery, to describe further into what the image of a nazi dressed as a woman, who desire to hurt children.
Personal discovery is conveyed the in the text Briar Rose by Jane Yolen by the use of many forms of techniques such as; repetition, allusion, 3rd person, motifs, metaphors, symbolism, allegory and imagery, to convey distinct ideas about a quest of self-discovery, the main protagonists past, the Holocaust and the importance of storytelling. Yolan has also utilized the fairy tale style genre in ‘Briar Rose’ along with allegory to explore the ideas of mystery, personal discovery and riddles to portray the underlying truth. Beginning a quest of personal-discovery can be difficult for an individual if they do not know where their ancestry or legacy truly lies. One of our main protagonists, Becca, began this quest when she made a promise to her Grandmother, Gemma. Becca had made a promise to find her true legacy, and to uncover Gemma’s past; a promise that was pieced together from an innocent fairy tale, Briar Rose, that Becca had been told by Gemma endlessly from a young child.
Each teenager writes and revel their everyday life before and during the Holocaust, their personal and political opinions and their anti-Semitic views. With the concise commentary by Holocaust survivor Jacob Boas, he makes their journeys unforgettable. Anne Frank’s diary is one of the few diaries that have been finely observed and made a famous piece of writing around the world. Anne pursues for independence and knows that Hitler can kill humans but he cannot destroy their spirit. The ways that Anne views the war with her eyes makes it easy to relate to her.
Jane Yolen has also used epigraphs at the beginning of each section, Home, Castle and Home Again; these present an authorial voice to the narrative. Yolen’s intention is to educate contemporary society of the atrocities of the Holocaust and to reinvigorate the readers interest in this
Luhrmann’s film, then again, could on the verge of excessively boisterous and unsavoury at the same time, but in any case it kept me awake. I have to say, neither of these films are the complete adaptation of The Great Gatsby. The novel is the overall the best genre for the audience, the descriptive techniques used by F. Scott Fitzgerald, make the novel the great art that it is, with the novel written like that it gives the audience the opportunity to imagine the novel how they