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Fairy Tales

In: English and Literature

Submitted By hatchermd
Words 2527
Pages 11
Fairy tales, whether written or visual are used as a medium to teach children morals, life lessons and social etiquette. From interpretations, a fairy tale can be defined as a story that has fictitious and folklore characters which displays the message for every action there is a reaction whether it be positive or negative. These fictitious characters influence children and help them to understand the messages so that children can be socially accepted (Hohr). The origins of fairy tales can not be narrowed to a specific time line but they were once old wives tales which were passed on from generation to generation which writers have modified to become or claimed as their own. Although fairy tales are useful to teach children morals fairy tales are inappropriate for children because of the psychological effects, presentation of the content and morals. This has given reasons for the modifications of fairy tales although these modifications are believed to be better both traditional and modern fairy tales are in somewhat way unsuitable for children. The early versions of fairy tales are not filled with the sanctified, altruistic images seen today but are filled with gory and sadistic images. In an attempt to understand these reasons for modifications of fairy tales we must understand the journey which the traditional writers took. Thomas O'Neil senior writer at the National Geographic and Maria Tartar the chair for program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University both go into details about the Grimm brothers lives and journey to becoming story tellers. The original writer's of the most popularized fairy tales are the Grimm brothers, they wrote fairy tales such as Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel among others. They wrote many of these stories for adult audiences specifically scholars and once it was realized that the stories were becoming more

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