Luke Stamps
Mrs. Moehring
English 2
11-13-17
In my classic “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” by the Brothers Grimm there are a lot of interesting fairy tales. Did you know a lot of the fairy tales we know today have a darker original version? Although some of them have positive morals they can also have a racial prejudice and be sinister at times. I chose my three favorite stories to talk about, “The Fisherman and His Wife”, “The Seven Crows” and “Cinderella”.
My first and probably the one with the biggest positive message is “The Fisherman and His Wife”. In this story a poor fisherman goes down to to the riverbank to fish when one day he catches a giant talking fish. The fish convinces the fisherman to let him go, because he is a magic prince. The fisherman lets the fish go and returns to the ditch he lives in and tells his wife what had happened. His wife gets mad and says to go back and ask the fish for a cottage to live in. He does this and returns to his wife but his wife is not content and she keeps asking for more. In the end the wife ends up losing everything she has because of her selfishness. Overall I really like this story because it teaches us to be content with what we have.
In the story “The Seven Crows” a man has seven sons and one daughter but the daughter is very sick and looks like she will not live so the father tells his sons to go down to the well to get water to christen her. All the brothers want to be the first one to come with the water but they all lose their buckets in the well. Afraid to go home to their father they run away. After the father realizes they aren’t coming back he curses them to be crows. But then his daughter begins to grow to a healthy size which mean she will live. Later when the daughter is older she figures out she used to have seven brothers she goes looking for them. The only thing she brings is some food, water, and her mother’s ring. On her way to the castle where her brothers are kept she finds a man who gives her a key to be able to get into the castle. When she gets to the castle door she realizes that she lost the key along the way. Then she realizes that the key hole would fit her finger she cuts off her finger to unlock the door. When she gets into the castle she meets her brother who are crows and sets them free, but when she does they turn back into humans and and the daughter becomes sickly and dies. The moral of the story is to be careful what you wish for because it might not always be good.
The last story that I liked was the original “Cinderella” which is a lot different than the popular version we have today. In this version Cinderella’s evil stepmother still does not let her go to the ball. When the prince comes to take a girl to the ball the evil stepmother tells the oldest daughter to go to the ball with the prince but when she tries to put on the glass slipper on her foot is to big. The stepmother cuts the daughters toes off for her to fit into the slipper. On her way the ball the prince notices blood coming from the girls shoe and heads back to the house. When he says that she is not the right girl the stepmother takes Cinderella’s other sister and tries to fit her into the slipper. After realizing that her foot is also to big so the stepmother cuts off the daughters heal to make the slipper fit. On the way to the ball the prince notices again blood coming from the slipper and heads back and says it is still the wrong girl. Eventually Cinderella fits into the slipper and goes to the ball with prince. This story is interesting because it is cool to see how it is changed from this original form to fit something more happy to leave the ready with a better feeling.
In “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” there are a lot of interesting stories. Some of the stories can have a positive moral like the ones I talked about in this paper. Some of the other stories have racial prejudice and be even a little more dark than the stories I showed. If you don’t have enough time to read the whole compilation of fairy tales I would recommend reading these three. Overall I enjoyed reading this compilation of fairy tales and would advise reading it to anyone who wants the chills.