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Essay Classic Fairy Tales: Annotated Bibliography

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In his evaluation of Little Red Riding Hood, Bill Delaney states, “In analyzing a story . . . it is often the most incongruous element that can be the most revealing.” To Delaney, the most revealing element in Little Red Riding Hood is the protagonist’s scarlet cloak. Delaney wonders how a peasant girl could own such a luxurious item. First, he speculates that a “Lady Bountiful” gave her the cloak, which had belonged to her daughter. Later, however, Delaney suggests that the cloak is merely symbolic, perhaps representing a fantasy world in which she lives.
In his analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Richard Kelly describes Wonderland as a nonsensical place where Alice is “treated rudely, bullied, asked questions with no …show more content…

McGovern’s evaluation of The Emperor’s New Clothes begins with a brief history, in which she describes how the story originated in Spain in the fourteenth century and was later adapted by Hans Christian Andersen. She states that “it is still cited as an example of the foolish behavior of those in authority.” After telling of the child who points out that the emperor in fact does not have anything on, McGovern declares “It is only the child who has not yet become corrupted by the world who will tell what he or she sees.” Another moral, McGovern says, lies in the fact that although the emperor knows he is not wearing any clothes, his pride prevents him from admitting it.
As McGovern explains in her synopsis of The Little Mermaid, a mermaid falls in love with a prince and makes a deal with a witch: She will trade her speech for legs, and if the prince marries her, she will get a soul. If he marries someone else, “she will turn to foam on the sea.” The prince does marry someone else, but the mermaid’s sisters save her by giving their hair to the witch.

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