Tess Kamen

I feel that during this semester I was able to flex my writing skills. Even though my formatting for these essays were not perfect, the content was fun to evaluate and write about. My current job has only allowed me to write emails or notes about clients, so writing about characters and fairy tales have been a real highlight of this class. Unfortunately, my quizzes were not done very well. Moving forward, I need to have a better study system for understanding literary terms. The skills I developed in this class that could be applied to real world experience would be evaluating stories or other works. Instead of shying away from a story or poem out of fear that I won’t understand it, I’ll be able to tackle it head on.

The vignette that surprised me was “Geraldo, No Last Name”. It stood out to me since this man was clearly murdered in an accident, and this was very jarring in comparison to the previous vignettes. The vignette that intrigued me the most was the one my group read for class “Cathy Queen of Cats”. There was so much going on in this vignette. Cathy, Esperanza’s new friend was introduced. It was clear that Cathy was detailing the cast of characters in the neighborhood, but the explanations came across as gossip instead of a quick rundown. It also turned the story back around on Cathy, and we were able to decipher that she lived in a home with many cats and a family that fills her head with delusions of wealthy family members in France. The vignette that puzzled me the most was “Four Skinny Trees”. Reading it over again, I was unsure if she was speaking about actual trees or real people. She personified the trees, detailing them with humanistic features such as elbows, or being too skinny, or her being able to hear them.

I have decided to write my research paper on neglectful or abusive parents in fairy tales. I have found one source in the BMCC library and one source from Louisiana Tech University regarding the roles of these sorts of parents in specific stories. These fairy tales will include Snow White, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Allerleirauh, and Rumpelstiltskin. I am also the proud owner of a beautiful “Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales” book, so all stories discussed in the essay will be about those, labeled as my primary source. The secondary source from the BMCC library that I have chosen is called “The Rationalization of Abandonment and Abuse in Fairy Tales”, by Jack Zipes. He discusses how all the adults in “Hansel and Gretel” play their part to abuse and neglect the children. The article also delves into the social norms of 19thcentury Germany, and how it systematically allowed the reader to overlook the darkest parts of the story out of ignorance and societal conditioning. Even though this source is specifically about “Hansel and Gretel”, it is also relevant to the rest of the fairytales, since all these stories were adapted for that time period by the Brother’s Grimm. I decided to pull ideas from the other secondary source “Finding Our “Happily Ever After”: How Poor Fairy- Tale Parenting Breeds a Better Child, Chapter 2: BAD FAIRY TALE PARENTING BY STEREOTYPICALLY EVIL STEPMOTHERS AND ABUSIVE FATHERS”, by Brandie Crain, since I wanted to be able to add a few more examples of this theme in other fairy tales.

Since I am such an avid lover of fairy tales, it has been hard to pinpoint exactly which topic I would like to discuss. While I am a human services major, I am considering writing about fairy tales and psychology. This would possibly include the blatant disrespect and emotional immaturity of the adults, the growth that the main characters must go through as a result, and if there are any callbacks to mental illness or specific human behaviors throughout these stories. I did find an interesting article called “Princes Charming are not all made equal. The social cognition of mating strategies in four classical fairy tales” by Lorenza Lucci Basili and Pier Luigi Sacco. In the article, they go over multiple fairy tales and use them as examples to explain something called the “Tie-Up Theory”. This is used to dissect how classic fairy tales depict male and female interactions beyond stereotypes. They emphasize individual traits that make partners fit together and how they tie into human behavior.

The messages of fairy tales are a lot more complex than I previously thought. I absolutely love fairy tales, but this is more from a perspective of aesthetic. Delving into them from the perspective of lessons is not something I normally think to do. Good or famous fairy tales are also not one dimensional. They are layered with multiple meanings and target multiple audiences. For example, in relation to “Little Snow White”, I never connected that this was both a coming-of-age story and a cautionary tale. My only belief with this story was strictly toxic feminism. The evil queen was growing older, and her beauty was fading, so she took it out on Snow White who was growing more beautiful every day. We see this in everyday life with mothers, daughters, or across generations. After living with the seven dwarves and eating the poison apple, Snow White was saved by the prince. While this does feed into the “waiting for a man to save you” ideology, it does show our leading character entering a new stage of life, overcoming her conflict, and showing growth.

The article does not touch on how the parents act, and it did not describe how little of a role they played in the story. Throughout the story, the parents were hardly mentioned. They clearly were extremely passive with disciplining their children, and the mother was even referred to as a “cabbage”. The father also did very little while the family was being taken by the Misfit. The article did not discuss the narcissistic tendences of the Grandmother. She was extremely concerned about her appearance and how she wanted things to go in the car. She derailed their trip by looking for a house from her childhood without a map, removing them from the main road and causing the accident. The Grandmother also did not check in with her family to make sure they were alright after the car crash. Her main concern was with herself, and whether she would get attention if she was injured.

Reading Oedipus the King was fascinating to me, especially knowing how old the story/play is. It had me thinking about what inspired Sophocles to write this, and if he pulled elements from things he had seen in his life. I had read Oedipus the King in high school, so I knew what to expect. However, my memory had faded a bit, so certain elements of this story were brought back to my attention. This included Jocasta hanging herself, and Oedipus gouging out his own eyes. The dialog was challenging for me, seeing as it was written and translated an extremely long time ago. Having it explained in class was helpful but was difficult to understand while doing some of the reading on my own. If I were to be in a production of this play, I would probably want to play the role of Jocasta because she seems like an interesting character. While she seems strong willed and put together, she folds under the weight of her tragic findings. Upon finding out that her entire marriage is a sham and that she has married her own child, she decides to end her life. It would be interesting to get into the mindset of someone who goes into full reaction mode after having the rug pulled out from under them.

During COVID, people were fearful and seemed to turn on each other. Even if it was not intentional, especially with mandated social distancing, we all became wary of the next person’s actions. We also looked strongly to social media or experts highly respected in the medical field for answers. People became depressed, acted out in strange ways, distanced themselves from people in emotional ways, and partook in destructive behaviors. The population also began to distrust our government. This started with how they handled the beginning of the pandemic, followed by the BLM protesting, and continued to spiral from there. It all came to an intense head during the election and did not stop there. We are still seeing massive distrust in our leaders, and the pandemic seemed to be the catalyst. In Oedipus the King, the Thebans responded to the plague with fear and uncertainty, seeking help from leaders and experts. While they blamed each other and turned to religion. In looking at the commonalities of the story and our experience, there truly were not many differences. Both our modern society and the Thebans shared valid human emotions such as fear and anxiety, and we yearned for solutions for the problem.

The quote that I chose as “It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature” by Henry James. This quote corelates with the short story “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin. In this story, we see Mrs. Mallard responding to her husband’s sudden death. We are not given any further description on her circumstances other than a description of what she looks like, that she has a heart condition, and what her thought process is. We also know the time period in which it was written, and that it was written by a woman. Even though it is not written, the reader would know based on these bits of information that it was frowned upon for women to not be married during this time period. Historically speaking, widows were able to have more autonomy over their own lives at that time, especially when their late husbands were well off.    

After reading “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, I would write more about details in character development regarding Sylvia and how she came to be more aware of her socio-economic situation with little conversation. Sylvia was the leader of her group, smarter than the rest, and was afraid to go into the store but at first was unaware why. She was able to realize that she did not have the types of funds to pay for expensive toys. The price of those toys was the price to feed her entire family. She did not ask her mother about the money, but was knew exactly what she would say, showing that she understood that her family could not afford those kinds of luxuries. Miss Moore knew this about Sylvia, and by directing her questions at her, she showed the reader that she wanted Sylvia to realize the true lesson she was trying to teach the group without speaking further on it. From there, she was able to piece her future together and decide that she would not feel that way again when she grew up. The title that I would give this essay is “Character Analysis of Sylvia in ‘The Lesson’”.