Based upon the readings this semester, and my own experience with fairytales and literature growing up, I do believe that fairytales matter. Fairytales matter because they allow us to view the world through another lens that isn’t our innate reality. By doing so, we are unaware at a young age of how important they really are to forming who we are and how we view the things around us. As we get older and look deeper into them with a more expanded worldview and older eyes, we see that fairytales offer us a way to connect back to our childlike wonder and remind us of a time when the world was simpler. We understand through them that the world seems so big, and that these stories tackle the things that taunt us as children in an attempt to make the hard-to-swallow things less scary and more compactable and easier to break down for our young minds, and our current ones as we digest the morals and lessons that they give to us. They have the ability to resonate with us on a psychological level, and are more important than we give them credit for, even as we are learning to understand their value. Fairy tales let our minds rest in the fantastical worlds and simplistic messages they give us to complicated situations. By presenting these ideas in something that isn’t our true reality, they become easier to fathom and connect to, and figure into our lives by staying with us and having a lasting and memorable impact even as we continue to grow.
The theorist which I believe helped me best understand fairytales in a new way is Robert Darton. His work gave me a more historical and social perspective on why fairytales exist, and how they have contributed to society over the course of decades and time periods. I have always thought of fairytales and more specifically literature in general as transformative and emotional ways that Tatar offers us, as well as somewhat been exposed to the ideas that Bettelheim proposes, which I think exist to a certain degree in all stories. Darton’s argument, however, was one I had never thought of or considered, and it opened my eyes to another side and element of fairytales and the hold they have on not only us and our subconscious, but what they mean and offer in the larger context of society, and even history. I have always thought them to be an individual tool, whereas Darton makes them out to be useful in a social context as well.
Something I learned that surprised me was looking deeper into the illustrator’s roles in addition to and in accordance with the author’s importance when it comes to really bringing a story to life. Especially when doing our illustrator mini project, it helped me understand art as a form of expression, especially in the realm of storytelling, and that being an illustrator and deciding what to capture and how to capture it is just as important as being an author. By providing images that relay the story, and by offering differing tones of the same story, it can be seen that the story does affect everyone differently and that how we perceive what is happening is unique to every person. Also by having a variety of different pictures, the reader can understand the depth that the illustrator can capture within an image.
The thing that interested me most about our topic was just getting to read and analyze the stories, as well as to dive deeper and understand their inner workings, how they are written to impact us, and the purpose of what they’re attempting to invoke out of the reader. I really enjoyed getting the opportunity to have discussions about the stories themselves, hear classmates’ reactions and opinions, and understanding the stories which we were already familiar with in a refreshed and perhaps more ‘mature’ way compared to how we thought of them and understood the versions we were presented with as kids.
I feel like we covered a lot of material throughout the course, including the theoretical readings and the tales from the big book. I wouldn’t say we really missed anything, although I wish we did get to read some more of the stories from the book we were already familiar with, or at least get to discuss them in class like The Little Mermaid, so we could at least compare it again to the Disney version and get everyone’s perspectives and thoughts about it. In addition, I think it might’ve been worthwhile to compare the different stories written by a common author, like Charles Perrault who had a ton of different stories. Does his writing style change? Is he always trying to implement the same morals? What does that say in terms of time periods and society? I feel like we did look into this a little bit, so I’m not sure if that counts as something we missed. Either way, I enjoyed all the things we did get to cover in this class, and I think that the future classes would too.
