The moral and acceptable form of fairy tales is needed to encourage speculation, as say Peter and Iona Opie in their book, “Classic Fairy Tales”. They say that fairy tales give children access to wonder, imagine, dream and enlarge their horizon. Moreover, they indicate that someone who isn’t used to speculation might “as well walk on four legs as on two”. In addition, fairy tales are the shortest entrance to children’s hearts, when they present them the most inevitable reality in our life, which is death, in a simplified manner, using magic and mythology. Thus, fairy tales are a friendlier mean to define death-and all realities- to youngsters. Hence, fairy tales could mostly be virtually imaginary, but realistic if well observed.
Narrow-minded scientists and theorists such as the British Peter Parley disagree with the use of fairy tales as teachers. Such people think that folk stories simulate to children a different world, where good is always victorious, and where imagination and the legendary hide the true real life they are supposed to face when they mature. Those opponents of fairy tales think that the use of documents full with technical essays, exact facts, numbers, and scientific theories instead of fairies is the only way to teach children in our modern industrial life, and to help them in getting used to their future concrete life. The “fact” that Parley and his supporters have missed is that imagination is the key idea of perhaps most of today’s modern technology achievements.
When Jules Verne, the famous French author composed his science fiction tales in the late 1800’s, describing an imaginary undersea transportation vehicle, no one expected that his imaginary vehicle would become a reality. Accordingly, Parley ought to realize that offering freedom of imagination to children through fairy tales is more “realistic” than limiting their minds by abstract and passive theoretical education.
It is true that fairy tales existed and will exist as long as life is finding its way, and as good and bad simultaneously exist. Jack Zipes, in his essay “Introduction to the Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm”, states that fairy tales do not just focus on happiness and charm, but also on cruelty and betrayal, murder and death, which are variable parts of reality.
In conclusion, the simple and true form of fairy tales is the one that is unequivocally needed, to define truth in a world where reality is hidden and virtualized, and where immorality is edited to appear virtually as morality. Otherwise, children may lose their creative imagination that provides them with the hope of reaching a better life, stimulates fair ambition inside them, and differentiate clearly and precisely between moral and immoral actions in front of them. Intellectuals must use today’s super technology to improve the “fairness” and the effectiveness of fairy tales, instead of approaching to commercial entertainment that consequently hides the moral of the new versions of fairy tales. In addition, the presence of fairy tales reminds mankind that evil, dishonesty, misery, injustice and intolerance are still threatening their life, and that they must act to terminate these forms of vice.
Ayman Hassan el Hakea, AUC Freshman, Engineering Faculty, Cairo, Egypt.
References:
Ashliman D. L. “Folklore and Mythology: Electronic Texts”.
Vandergrift, Kay. “Snow White Page: Context for the Study of Snow White”.
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It is that need to keep and protect national heritages that induced the German brothers and philologists, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm to collect folk and fairy tales throughout Saxony, Rhineland, Pomerania, Sudetenland, Bavaria, and all other parts of Germany, and then to publish their famous fairy tale collection “Kinder und Haus-Maerchen” in 1812. The original ancient tellers of fairy tales were typical countrymen and countrywomen, who put inside their tales their folklore, their customs, their tradition, and their inestimable culture.
This inextricable link between fairy tales, and the culture of the place where they are told, appears in the Grimm’s tales, as the writer John Ellis describes. He focuses on how the German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the famous story collectors, were concerned about their own German folklore, and about German nationalism particularly in their fairy tales, creating a true collection that reflects the culture of medieval Germany. Those early collections of fairy tales succeeded to describe precisely the milieu where they had been told, as they were collected from rural and less educated storytellers throughout the middle ages’ Europe.
Arriving at the twentieth century, the rise of nationalism has begun, causing two world wars, and an infinity of regional and internal conflicts. This friction between various types of self interest pushed some groups of people to spread unreal fairy tales which demoralize other groups of people. In consequence, fairy tales were abused in order to change reality, to twist truth, and to implant wrong prejudices among children, which grow with them and become unchangeable. The ability of fairy tales to be used in such ways made them hidden weapons that were used, and are still being used to achieve immoral goals, under the pretext of “education”.
The use of half-truths and untruths in tales, which reflect a society’s culture and common feeling, and bias against some other cultures, is far away from the idealistic principles on which “fairy” tales were based. The intended twisting of realities and mixing of events in some of the Walt Disney tale such as “Prince of Egypt”, or in the German and Austrian anti-Semitic tales, or even in the racist anti-black tales, does really aim to gain some strategic political positions by its tellers. Such fraudulent presentations provided with modern media technology, are definitely successful in persuading children that what they contain is truthful.
While children who are often exposed to such ambiguity grow up, a deep belief in the morality of the deceptive fairy tales that they have already watched is gradually amplified among them. This is how hatred and xenophobia are created using that kind of biased tales.
A remarkable part of the modern “fairy tale” can be completely deceptive. When American Indians are shown as the “bad”, and the Europeans invaders are shown as the “good” in a cowboy animated tale, a feeling that Amerindians are culpable begins to affect the audience, who are mainly children. That means then that our children are gradually being exposed to doublespeak and twisted parole.
Myths, legends, folk fantasies, tales and stories, all have unknowingly been born before the beginning of recorded history. Our ancient human ancestors used to have a primitive, yet simple way of life. That primitive, yet simple life of our grandfathers, was-as in any period of time-also filled with injustice, threats, dishonesty, betrayal, cowardice and perhaps all other vices. Moreover, the largest part of the people used to spend their whole lifetimes in their native regions, due to the lack of transportation devices, and to the poverty and the limitation of the ancient means of communication.
This stream of circumstances has pushed fair, wise and especially old experienced people, to compile and pass on tales that encompass their dream of an extraordinarily perfect world. Through these kinds of simple and histrionic tales, both children and adults have been taught and educated. Each society had its own skill of transmitting moral messages through fairy tales, but at the end, all of those tales were essentially dedicated to the teaching of wisdom and values.
The immense progress of communications and transportation technology provided fairy tales with illustrations, animation and special effects that are able to effectively influence children. Some intellectuals believe that actually, fairy tales are beginning to deal more with fun and entertainment. Hence, they gradually lose that kind of “respect” offered from the audience. On the other hand, others see that fairy tales are a crucial factor of implanting creativity, imagination and ambition into children, and is responsible for teaching children to differentiate between virtue and vice.
Even if the existing shape of modern fairy tales has some disadvantages, they do possess more important advantages, whose absence shall severely affect the behavior of children.
Fairy tales go along with civilizations. In ancient Egypt, the famous morphological legend of “Isis and Osiris” was a true example of a fairy tale, in which the fight is between good and evil, and in which good is triumphant. One other spectacular ancient oeuvre is “The Iliad and The Odyssey” of Homer the Greek, which is considered as the best collected group of ancient mythological fairy tales.
Moreover, the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, described an absolutely imaginary fair world in his immortal oeuvre “Utopia”. In addition, fairy tales are the most valuable heritage linking our modern world to our deep past. Hence, how can anybody think that it is possible to erase fairy tales from our life, and to lose then one of the most valuable features of our culture?
Fairy tales are accorded a major role in the definition of a country’s culture and folklore. In his essay "Happily Ever After . . .Fairy Tales, Fables, and Myths”, H. Nicolas B. Clark, the literary theorist says, “Folklore was accorded a vital role in defining the texture of a country's cultural heritage, and stories began to be recorded, collected, and published.” People sharing a same culture use fairy tales as a permanent and effective medium to preserve their national heritage.
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