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The Trespasser Short Story

Good Essays

In both short stories, Campbell and Bowen had wrote a modern adaptation of classic stories. These tales and ballads are adapted to incorporate the author’s culture and life. Offer a different variation that is contextually significant. Both stories are like an expanded version of the tales and ballad. They modified some aspects of the story while maintaining the essence, or offer a different perspective of the concept of tales and ballad.
Bonnie Jo Campbell’s short story “The Trespasser” is a modern adaptation of Robert Southey’s fairytale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” In the story, a mother, father, and daughter arrive at their summer cottage and discover that it had been inhabited by trespassers—three men and a teenaged girl. The family explores the chaotic house and finds the various remnants left by the trespassers, particularly from the teenaged girl.
Campbell kept some aspects of the fairytale of Goldilocks, such as the same setting and numbers of characters. Campbell’s story takes in a cottage in the woods and the three bears of the mother, father, and daughter. Moreover, Campbell also includes that three men accompanied the girl, which may also be the three bears of Goldilocks. The girl who is described as a “curly-haired blonde” is an obvious portrayal of Goldilocks, alluding to the fact that Goldilocks was a trespasser.
Campbell modified some aspects of the fairytale to incorporate into her adaptation but maintained the essence of some the parts of the tale.

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