Fairy Tales Speak Trough Symbols

936 Words4 Pages
Elham Shirkhani
Mrs. La Rocca
EAC150 CR - College English
28 Nonember 2014
Fairy Tales Speak trough Symbols

Fairy tales have fed the imagination of many generations during the centuries. Through these stories, the human’s mind can fly beyond the reality and create new worlds with their specific rules and creatures. Symbolism is an intrinsic element of these creative stories. Fairy tales convey many meanings through symbols and consequently create a deeper space for their audiences. They look like a road that every time a person passes through them, he/she can find new things around. “Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White and Seven Dwarfs” gathered by the Brothers Grimm are two of these famous fairy tales. The central theme of both of these…show more content…
In the “sleeping beauty”, the dangers of puberty is symbolized by an accident in which a spindle that pricks Briar Rose ’s finger and causes the “evil prophecy to be fulfilled” (J.Grimm and W.Grimm). For Snow White this danger is symbolized through a comb: “an old woman, [pulls] out the poisoned comb and holding it up and [snow white] let herself be deceived, and opened the door” (J.Grimm and W.Grimm). In another part of the story, the snow white has a bite of a poisoned apple (again symbolizing the danger of puberty and falls to the ground dead (J.Grimm and W.Grimm). (Stone 46) emphasizes on the fact that both events of “Snow White” being sent out to be murdered, and Sleeping Beauty being put to sleep occur at puberty time .
Both stories try to symbolize the curiosity of the heroine towards her own body and her attempt to explore her sexuality is “punished with near death” (Stone 47). Sleeping Beauty tries to navigate through all the hidden places of the castle and during this navigation she finds “a little door, with a rusty key sticking out of the lock;” (J.Grimm and W.Grimm) which eventually leads to the activation of the curse. Here, as (Freud) mentions, "the human body as a whole is [symbolized by] a house and the separate organs of the body [are symbolized by] by portions of a house ”. In “Snow White’s story, the heroine gets tempted in exploring her sexuality (symbolized through the temptation of using a comb or eating an apple (i.e. possibly
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