Week One - Task #02. - “Things I Almost Remember”

[Prof. Sindor Aloyarc]

As you walk through the field of dancing bears, you’re hardly able to notice the rest of your surroundings until a glint of something catches your attention.

It occurs to you that whatever is flashing in the bushes not far away is spelling out Morse Code, which you were taught by a goofy, amateur magician a few years ago in exchange for helping him to load and unload his caravan, with the dual benefit of traveling a respectable distance with him.

short, short, short, short.
short.
short, long, short, short.
short, long, short, short.
long, long, long.

“…Hello,” you whisper, still in awe of the choreographed movements of the great beasts all around you, but attracted now toward the unknown glimmering.

Finding a path between the barrage of pirouettes and grand jetés, it isn’t until you’re right in front of the bushes that you realize the foliage here isn’t colored in the predominantly green tones you’re familiar with. Instead, every leaf and pine needle shines with violet shades and midnight blues in the twilight.

Actually (now you’re notice it), even the snow is more of a pale lavender than white, and the dark purple sky is tinged in the distance with cotton candy whirls of icy blueberry, frozen grape, and arctic mint.

“Where is this place?”

“Bearis,” a hushed voice startles you.

A man appears from behind one of the bushes, wearing a handsome, ankle length jacket with ornamental buttons, over a smart vest and tie.

“How did you do that?” He asks.

Racking your brain to think of what he could possibly be referring to, you stammer out a feeble, “Do—Do what?”

He responds by launching into a story about how the bears here have been at odds with humans ever since the royal heir of this land was taken as a cub by an evil sorcerer, emphasizing that those with wings denote who are part of the noble court.

“No one has seen or heard from the cub in so many years, and I haven’t seen the bears near a single human ever since then without them turning aggressive. But you…” His eyes take in your humble appearance. “You just walked right through a whole slew of them and not a single one snarled or growled even once.”

Not sure how to respond, you open your mouth trying to find some words, but wind up giving a half hearted shrug instead.

There’s nothing overtly unsettling to you about this man, so you continue to listen patiently as he explains more about how the family of royal bears are especially on high alert right now.

Apparently the sorcerer who used dark magic to cubnap the heir was vanquished, but not before laying a curse that would allow him to come back from the land of the dead to take unequivocal control over the domain should the heir not return to claim their rightful position before the winter solstice after their eighteenth birthday.

“Which is in three weeks,” the man tells you. “What’s more is that the sorcerer’s soul is set to begin returning to a physical form little by little each day beginning at the start of December, which of course we’ve just entered into, so everyone has been understandably stressed wondering how quickly he’ll be able to come back into his power and start wreaking havoc again.”

Task:
Anxiousness aside, finding yourself in a fantastical situation reminds you of the fairytales you grew up loving that transported you to far away lands. For this task, post a Research piece below using 100 words or more, offering any historical or symbolic significance of a fairytale you enjoy.

Alternatively you may write a Letter in 150 words or more from the perspective of one fairytale character to another!

This task is worth 15 beans/sapphires, with an additional 15 bonus beans/sapphires for completing all Week One tasks by end of activity. Deadline is 11:59pm (HOL time) on Thursday December 21st.

[Adeline Morior]

The Ugly Duckling. This is a Danish fairy tale about the life and adventures of a little duck that was born different in appearance and character. And is later to be found out, is really not a duck at all but a swan. It is listed as one of the most famous stories in the world.

The Ugly Duckling is written by one of the most notable fairy tale authors and poets - Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published in 1843. Hans himself looked and felt a little like an ugly duckling as he saw himself as an ugly boy with a big nose and big feet, but later grew up to have an amazing singing voice, talent for theatre and talent for writing. He was however mocked by others.

Symbolically, people will always judge, especially when you are not among people alike to you. Find your "tribe". Everyone is unique and special and beautiful. People's opinion isn't going to change it. Just love people for their "quirks". Recognize the swan within you.

[Lex Green]

The first known version of Cinderella is actually as old as around 7 BCE, from the Ancient Greeks. This original version of the story was about a girl called Rhodopis. In the story, Rhodopis was bathing, when an eagle flew down and stole one of her sandals. The eagle flies the sandal all the way to the king of Memphis, who believes the shape of the shoe to be so beautiful that he sends out soldiers and servants to attempt to find its owner. When the owner is discovered to be Rhodopis, the king immediately decides to marry her and make her queen. So, Cinderella was originally about a prince who fell in love with the shape of a shoe, rather than the girl it belonged to.

[Artemisia Thorne]

My favourite fairytale of all time is Beauty and the Beast, of which many version have been written over the years. While the most famous version of this fairytale is credited to Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756, the original written version of this fairytale was by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740.

In Villeneuve’s version of the tale, a man has 12 children, of which the youngest is the most beautiful as well as the most kind. When the man leaves to deal with business all his children ask for him to bring various gifts back for them, while this youngest asks only for a rose. The man goes about his business and on his journey back home gets lost in a storm, soon stumbling upon a castle where he seeks shelter for the night. The next morning he plucks a rose from the castle’s garden, at which point he is confronted by a ‘Beast’ who threatens to punish the man. Upon discovering that the man was picking the rose for his daughter, he gives him an out, the man can leave, but one of his daughters must take his place. The man returns home and informs his children of all that happened, and the next morning his youngest sets off to take her father’s place. During her time there the Beauty is treated well. Each night the Beast asks her to marry him, to which she consistently refuses, and following which she dreams of a handsome prince. Eventually, the Beauty becomes homesick, and the Beast grants her 2 months to visit her family. Due to her family’s pushing, she fails to return within her allotted time, and when she does it is to find the Beast near death. At this point she realises her love for him and when he asks her to marry him she quickly agrees. The following morning she wakes to find him no longer a Beast but rather the handsome prince she had seen in her dreams. He shares his tale, of how an evil fairy had tried to seduce him and when he refused had transferred him into a beast. The two are married and live happily ever after.

It is believed that the fairy tale was partially inspired by the tale of Petrus Gonsalvus, a man who suffered from hypertrichosis, wherein an abnormal amount of hair grows on the body. Stories of the life of Gonsalvus aren’t quite as happy as the fairy tale. At the age of 10 Gonsalvus was gifted by Margaret of Parma to Henry II of France, where he married and later had children, most of whom also suffered from hypertrichosis and were gifted to other nobles in a similar manner. Him and his wife later settled in Italy.

[Dibyarup James Potter]

The fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was based of off the life of Margarete von Waldeck, a Bavarian noblewoman in the 16th century. She was brought up in Bad Wildungen, where her brother used young children to mine at his copper mine. However, due to the physical labour required in mining, those children got severely deformed. Sadly because of this reason, they were often referred to as dwarfs.

The part about the poison apple is derived from the story of an old man who used to offer poisoned fruits to the workers and other children, who he believed had stolen from him.

Finally, Margarete's stepmother, who used to despise her, had sent her to the Brussels court in an attempt to get rid of her, where Prince Philip II of Spain fell in love with her. However, the king of Spain, his father, was against this relationship and sent Spanish assassins to kill Margarete. These assassins were presumed to have poisoned her, ultimately leading to her demise.

[Scarlet Robloutain]

Sleeping Beauty has always been one of my favourite stories. I like the story of a princess who is cursed to sleep for a hundred years until a brave prince comes to rescue her. The tale has so much magic and fantasy, with a beautiful fairy godmother, a terrifying evil witch, and a powerful spell that is only broken by true love. However much I like this version, Basile's tale fascinates me more as it calls up more emotions.

The earliest recorded version of Sleeping Beauty is discovered within the story of Perceforest, written between 1330 and 1344.

Giambattista Basile contributed another yet more gruesome version, found in his posthumously published collection, The Pentamerone, in 1634. It was named Sun, Moon, and Talia.
Talia, the slumbering beauty, faces a perilous fate predicted by wise men and astrologers at her birth. A splinter of flax, deemed a danger, becomes the reason for her deep sleep. Intrigued by an old woman spinning, Talia unwittingly pricks herself, succumbing to what appears as death. Abandoned by her father, she awaits an unknown fate. A passing king discovers Talia, unconscious but alive, and she becomes a mother to his twins. The king, unbeknownst to him, leaves a pregnant Talia. Upon his return to his own kingdom, a sinister plot unfolds as the jealous queen orchestrates a plan to harm Talia and the twins. However, the truth unravels and justice is served, resulting in the union of the king and Talia, letting them live happily ever after.

Charles Perrault adapted this rendition in his work Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697. After that the Brothers Grimm's version was derived from Perrault's, having it heard somewhere.

[Evie Figg]

Snow White was a German fairy tale which was published alongside an array of stories within the collection of the Brother's Grimm fairy tales. The story itself was first published in 1812 yet the final revision of the story was published in 1857 in the book "Grimm's Fairy Tales." Although different versions of this story exist, the basic plot remains the same, an evil queen jealous of a young princess, with plans of destruction. The princess, Snow White, manages to escape the queen, in the comfort of a cottage in the woods belonging to the seven dwarves. This fairy tale was selected by Disney was their first full length feature film, and is regarded as one of their most successful and well known stories. Snow White as a princess and a character, continues to enlighten young girls today, whether they were introduced to her from the Disney adaptation, or the Brother's Grimm, Snow White is one of the most well known fairy tale characters of all time.

[Viviana Kingston]

A Thousand and One Arabian nights is a collection of fairytale and folktales in the main story. Like any other story, there are many versions - one being instalments of a very big series of books and the another being the basic version which is the more popular version simply because it is condensed and does not contain the more vivid scenes the original tale contains. The original tale is longer than the basic one only because it narrates the fairytales that are told each night. It consists of 17 volumes in total! (Though I’ve only managed to read one volume myself - I sincerely advise to not read the original version of the story with the 17 volumes, it is not a pretty read and has very violent and explicit content). The story is about a king by the name of Shahryar who discovered his wife had not been faithful. He takes her life and vows to marry a new bride each night to kill them each morning in revenge. There comes a time when the kingdom has almost no one left except the vizier’s two daughters. His eldest daughter, a witty storyteller by the name of Shaharazad/Scheherazade decides to take matters into her own hands and to stop his killing spree. She comes up with an ingenious plan with the help of her sister. She marries the king and requests that her last wish is to tell her sister one last story. Her sister arrives and she spins a tale but when she notices sunrise, she stops on a cliffhanger, convincing the king to let her live one more night in order to finish the story. He lets her live, and she finishes the story the next night, only to start another story that she leaves incomplete. This goes on for 1001 nights until he just spares her life (according to one version of the story, there are many possible reasons depending on which version you come across). The tales she spins gave rise to many classic stories we know today like Ali Baba/Aladdin, Sinbad…this collection of stories has many and many symbolisms but the most important aspect about it is the historic significance. It helped unite many cultures under a single Islamic civilisation and it has a great influence on literature, music, art, cinema - the forms of media - from centuries ago, up until today.

[River Fenwick]

The fairy tale of Rapunzel can first be traced back to the Brothers Grimm in one of their first published tales in 1812. Many view this tale as another long string of stories created regarding maidens in towers that originated in Medieval Europe. However, the tale's origins go back much further, 1500 years before the Brothers Grimm wrote this. Rapunzel is thought to be based on the story of Saint Barbara, who was imprisoned in a tower in Europe during the third century. Her father locked her away because of her beauty, though many men visited the tower to ask for marriage. However, she refused them all and instead devoted herself to religion.

[Aquaria Sandalwood]

Sleeping beauty has always been a fairytale that I have rather enjoyed. If we look at it symbolically, we can see that Sleeping Beauty is a mythical tale of higher love. On the surface, it may seem that it is a lesson to women that all they need to complete them is for their prince to find them and awaken them with a kiss, but if we look closer, we can see that it could symbolically be all about our relationships with the different parts of ourselves.
The prince can represent consciousness, the part of us that is searching for meaning, wanting to understand the universe, but ultimately seeks out our more feminine aspect, the soul. The soul is symbolized by Sleeping Beauty, the feeling values, Eros. When we look at it this way, it seems to not be a story about rescuing the damsel in distress at all, but rather a story about the need for our heart and our head to connect and find balance, so that we can be whole within ourselves.

[Hiya Debnath]

One of my favorite fairytales is that of "The Little Mermaid". This tale was first published in 1837 and titled Den lille havfrue. It was originally conceived and written in Danish by the fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen. Since "Sleeping Beauty" in 1959, "The Little Mermaid" was Disney's first animated fairy tale. The story is about a young mermaid princess called Ariel, the youngest of the daughters of the mer-King Triton, who falls in love with a human prince she sees drowning and saves. There is a lot of symbolism associated with the story. Ariel always felt like a misfit in her own world which represented a youth's struggle to be heard, and her desire to explore the human world above the sea symbolized a longing for freedom and being rescued. Her funny misinterpretations of the objects from the human world symbolized her innocence and ignorance of the planet beyond her own realm, besides her interest in attributing some sort of value to the objects by theorizing on how they may work. When she saved the human Prince from drowning and fell in love with him, she decided to become a human to be able to live in his world. Her wish to leave her own realm for an unknown world for the sake of love is symbolically significant of her deep love, sacrifice, and courage to embrace the unknown. For the same, she chose to get herself human legs, and had to take help from the sea-witch Ursula, who took away her voice in return. Giving up her voice was yet another act of sacrifice. However, losing her voice to get human legs was also symbolic of losing her only means of expression and connecting to the world, in an attempt to fit into the very same world. This ironical dilemma of having to pay an equally significant hefty price, to fulfil her heart's desire, is quite interesting. It is like taking away one of her main advantages in exchange of giving her another. This indicates that Ursula never actually meant to help her at all, which symbolizes how an evil person can manipulate the desperate by appearing to give them something they need, but not actually giving something very helpful, or taking away a bigger, unreasonable price, in return. When she finally reached the human world, she had no clothes, symbolizing not only her huge sacrifice, but also her helplessness even after her deliverance.
In the original version of this fairytale, as written by Hans Christian Andersen, the story has a different, darker and unhappy ending. In Andersen's story, the prince chooses to marry a human princess in the end, under the impression that the human princess had saved him from drowning, and never recognizes Ariel. Ariel's sisters give Ariel a knife to kill the prince on his wedding night so that she can regain her voice and become a mermaid again and return to her own life in the sea. However, Ariel fails to kill the prince because of the love she felt for him and dies, becoming sea foam. Not a happy ending like the one portrayed by Disney. However, the symbolism of needing to kill the prince to be able to return to the sea again as a mermaid and regain her voice is symbolic of the temptation to give up on or kill her dreams (in this case, the prince represents her dreams) in order to return to the safe and sound realm where she originally belonged but was never happy. However, she picks the harder choice and perishes in pursuit of her dreams (dying to become sea foam) instead of choosing to return to her own world as an ordinary mermaid, proving that she was extraordinary. Her love and sacrifice for the prince in this case, symbolizes her passion for her dreams. She chooses freedom in death over mundane life in the sea where she isn't heard and doesn't fit in.
The idea of a mermaid, a half-human and half-fish, itself is symbolic of a half-and-half identity, that is being a misfit. The whole story is somehow built upon the theme of a huge and significant identity crisis and the struggle to find oneself and fit in, the mixed half-human and half-fish appearance of a mermaid and the quest to find and fit in a new world, symbolizing the same.
However, both the original and the Disney versions of the fairytale are highly stimulating and interesting. It is one of the most favorite fairytales of children. Children tend to find the idea of a human-like creature with a fish tail living under the sea very intriguing. It is almost like a dream of being able to breathe and live in water, despite being human, come true, in the form of a mermaid living it. Many children wish they were birds or fish, and could fly or breathe underwater, and a mermaid actually gets to live as a fish under the sea, despite being human, making that wish a reality. This is probably one of the major reasons why children love the story. Ironically, the mermaid does not feel like she fits into her realm and wants to be a human instead.