The Emperor's New Clothes By Hans Chrisitian Andersen

Maria Tatar’s “An Introduction to Fairy Tales” discusses the impact on how the stories help guide the children from their younger age. The first five paragraphs of the article mentioned about how the children can overflow with imagination, and can vividly see their reality of desire and also, fear. The fairytales can also corrupt the naïve minds of the child in a way of making them realize the reality of the world is unjustified, and people can be harsh. Moreover, Tatar gives an explanation on how people grow up with the same fairy tales with different versions; which gives an entirely different personal idea. Fairy tales also develop the child’s intellectual mind by reading various kinds of genre.

Fairy Tales are not just stories that parents tell to their children, but stories with hidden valuable messages which are mostly left on a side. In the article “An Introduction to Fairy Tales,” Maria Tatar clearly explains how people need fairy tales in their lives. Tatar also states how fairy tales have the ability to take the listener, especially children’s, into a journey in which they can play with their imagination so that they can discover their deepest fears and wishes. Personally I agree with the author, because of the fact that in an individual’s lives as they get older, they will try to define themselves, sometimes comparing their own life with a character from their favorite story or Fairy Tale.

Elena M. Marquina is the author of “Why Fairy Tales Are Good For Kids: Big Bad Wolf And All!” In the article, she stated how fairy tales are not inappropriate to children. Unlike most of the parents, Elena believes that the sanitized fairy tales loses its charms and moral lessons. Fairy tales also offer an interesting approach for children to handle realistic problems that they will faced such as a new stepmother, the need of a house, and the lack of food.

Fairytales and fantasies have existed to tell children’s stories because of their ability to bring a child

There is nothing more precious and heartwarming than the innocence of a child. The majority of parents in society want to shield children from the bad in life which is appreciated. Within human nature exists desires of inappropriate behavior; envy, deceit, selfishness, revenge, violence, assault and murder. The most well-known fairy tales depict virtue and the evil in life. Even more important, the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give a better direction to his life. (Bettelheim).

In the essay “Fairy Tales and Modern Stories”, Bruno Bettelheim argues that fairy tales can provide children more reassurance than realistic stories. Bettelheim used examples like “The Little Engine that Could”,”The Swiss Family Robinson” and “Rapunzel” to show how realistic stories and fairy tales both affected children’s thinking. The author claims that modern stories don’t compare to fairy tales, because they can’t provide an outlet for children to work through their problems and emotions. Bettelheim explains that fairy tales give children the reassurance and hope that there's a better future that is waiting for them. He argues that fairy tales can have a more impactful effect because it can offer “escape” and “consolation” for troublesome events in their lives. He even claims that modern stories fail to give the reader “encouraging

Most people recall their favorite part of going to bed as a child being the bed-time stories our parents told us every night. It was a pleasant distraction to the fact that we had to end the day and we loved hearing about how the princess found her prince and then how they both lived happily ever after. However, what we never realized was the harmful subtexts being taught to us by these fairy tales as young girls and boys. At that age, most children cannot really grasp the issue within the fairytale, but as one grows older, it becomes more apparent.

Reading fairy tales or seeing them represented has become part of an everyday routine for children. As Baker-Sperry states, “Through interaction that occurs within everyday routines (Corsaro 1997), children are able to learn the rules of the social group in which they are a part” (Baker-Sperry 717-718). For example, through Red Riding Hood, children learn to listen to their parents and to be wary of strangers. Some of these messages are harmful though; not all girls have to be naive and weak while boys are predacious wolves. Not everyone has to play the role that society assigns them.

In The Emperor’s New Clothes, the Emperor asked two weavers to weave him a cloth of extreme beauty and wealth -- something that said, “I am Emperor.” What the Emperor did not know was that these weavers were impostors who in the end made him look very idiotic with his “extraordinary dress” of absolutely nothing! However, he did not choose to see that what he was wearing was clearly nonexistent, instead he chose to believe that he was of higher standing than anyone else in his city.

The fairy tale helps the child to understand a balance between the good and the evil; it gives him a hope for a good future.” Fairy tales assure the

Fairy tales picture a world filled with magic, love and the triumph of the good over the evil. Fairy tales are a window to other worlds where the wildest dreams can come true and the hero always lives happily ever after preferably paired with his loved one. Although some people argue that fairy tales are full of stereotypes, filled with frightening monsters and promote racism and sexism I believe that they are wrong because fairy tales provide valuable moral lessons to children, teach them other countries' cultures promote the imagination and the cognitive development and therefore they should be read to young children.

In Tatar’s article, An Introduction to Fairy Tales, she draws us in by describing childhood books as “sacred objects.” She takes a quote from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. describing how the stories give lessons about what a child subconsciously knows - “that human nature is not innately good, that conflict is real, that life is harsh before it is happy - and thereby reassure them about their own fears and their own sense of self,” (Tatar 306). She describes how many adults long for the simplicity of enjoying those stories in their childhoods, only to realize that they outgrew them, and instead have been introduced to reality. The original stories were more for adults rather than for children. Nowadays, stories have been adapted to be more suitable for children. Fairy tales may allow a kid to wonder due to their charm, but they also can

Fairy tales are something that everyone has read or seen, they all seem to have important lessons at the end of each one to teach young children some of the lessons they need for life. These fairy tales when we were younger all seemed innocent and something we all hoped that would happen to us. Little did we know as we got older that the fairy tales we all knew and loved when we were younger, weren't as innocent as they seemed.

The tellings of The Little Match Girl, both the modern version and the traditional short story by Hans Christian Andersen, tell the story of a poor young girl selling matches in blistering cold weather while illustrating the beauty of hope, reminding readers not to take things for granted and encouraging us to become more aware of the ones who do not have a voice to speak for themselves. The original telling of The Little Match Girl started off as a short story written by Andersen when inspired by a young girl he saw selling matches in the streets and after hearing that his own mother was forced by her parents to beg for money on the streets and rather than returning home empty handed she took refuge under a bridge all night where the cold nearly took her life. Two modern adaptations that compare to the traditional are the 1987 film The Little Match Girl directed by Lindsay-Hogg and Disney Studios 2006 short film rendition of The Little Match Girl, where the filmmakers attempt to keep the same themes that are present in Andersen’s version while adding their own twists.

Realism is a theatrical movement during the 19th century, illustrating a story without “artificial” and supernatural elements, in other words, a realism play would show things that happen in our everyday life, much like naturalism. We can distinguish realism from other theatrical movements by the facts that its characters are believable to be the everyday type, the costumes are authentic to the time period being illustrated, the setting is based in only one location that is as close to our everyday life as possible, and because the story happens within 24 hours and only has one story line.