Why Are Fairy Tales important In Society
Why Are Fairy Tales important In Society? Fairy tales are probably the most important and constant part of our society. The stories are embedded deep within us since childhood, and are relived constantly throughout adulthood. What they represent haunts us, and their meanings are as obvious as the mundane paths of lives we all go through. Whereas children seem to be lacking full understanding of them, adults are no strangers to the world of fairy tales. As C. S. Lewis once said, “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” Our culture, and many others, takes on a serious amount of fairy tales to entertain children. We all know of the seven dwarves and the long golden hairs of Rapunzel. We all feel like the damsel in distress will be saved by the knight in shining armor, and that the dragon will always be slain. But we also know that if you ask a funny looking guy for the power to make gold out of straw you’ll end up with no first born son. Fairy tales have been the “don’t do this and don’t do that” of every child. In fact, even when a mother tells her child that if he eats a melon seed he’ll grow a plant in his stomach the main element of fairy tales is being used: consequences. We teach our children what they should do so they can earn rewards and what they shouldn’t do so that they are not punished through these centuries’ old tales, and while not always the best teacher, it certainly has a major part in everyone’s childhood. One may think that something as trivial as a bedtime story would not have anything to do with real life. In fact, most would think that a fairy tale is just about paradise compared to the life they live. They are wrong. Many fairy tales depict what life is truly about. Here, we have rape, kidnapping, and murder. There, we have the Big Bad Wolf, the sorcerers and witches, and the evil stepmother. There’s a lot more to these stories than simple entertainment. In the classic Red Riding Hood, a little girl happens to