This weekend we bought a big book full of the fairy tales written by Hans Christian Andersen. We are going to lay on the bed in my room and read at least one every night. I grew up with fairy tales about the house and lots of stories that we've all heard. Apparently, I'm not completely familiar with many, many fairy tales. It made me wonder how many people are. So for fun, I have decided to give a brief, very brief, review of the fairy tales we read.
A soldier chops off an innocent passing witch's head to steal her grandmother's tinder box that was deep inside a hollow tree. He greedily steals away the copper, silver, and gold. Then, in the night, he has a dog, that's right, a dog, steal the princess from her room to bring her to him to kiss each night. The dog trickily tries to protect the soldier from the man-hunt. In the end, the soldier marries the princess and becomes king.
A few thoughts/questions:
- Why did he chop of the witch's head?
- Where was the regiment to which he belonged?
- Why were the dogs' eyes so big?
- Why didn't the princess wake up after being drug by dog to a stranger's house?
- Why wasn't the king and his army smarter than the dogs?
- What kind of happy ending is "Soldier kills and cheats his way to become king?"
- I thought fairy tales were supposed to have happy endings. It could be argued that this was a happy ending for the soldier. But, what about the witch? What about the princess who got tricked? What about the kingdom who got a lying king?
- What did Hans mean to teach us with this story?
- I choose to learn: big eyed dogs will get me in trouble.
0 comments:
Post a Comment