Awhile back, Kim mentioned that I should start trying to read to the kid, since he’s at the point where he can hear/recognize my voice. Well, I liked the idea and thought about the best of the books that I could read to my future son.
I started to take Faust off the shelf, and Kim quietly but firmly suggested that I choose another book to read. (At the time, I was thinking, “Hey, I’ve always wanted to read it, and the kid’s not going to know the difference…” but she thought it was a little to mind-bending and we don’t want a little Charlie Manson…) So we basically settled down to either Canterbury Tales or Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
I thought, “Well, ok, I can see your point… let’s go with Fairy Tales.”
Mind you, this is the original just-translated-from-German version. Wow… I think that I might have been better off with Faust. Talk about bloody, violent, petty people… and that’s just the princesses! One of the stories, (Faithful John,) was about a faithful servant to the King who voluntarily turns to stone so that he can save the King and his new bride, (whom he kidnapped for the King,) and then later on the King finds out that he can bring his faithful servant back from stone, if he beheads his two sons… now, the wierd thing is, he does it! Yikes, talk about an awkward moment reading to my unborn son…
Anywho, I was talking to a guy at work, and he had a good point. Back then, these were stories to teach kids about the world that they were being born into. Aristocracy was violent, and whatever whims that they have, they take out on the peasantry. It wasn’t until things got better, (errr, more civilized?) that we started to “water down” the fairy tales and they became more entertainment for the children than teaching them about the dangers of the world
Has anyone heard of any modern “Fairy Tales” of gangsters, evil bankers, mind-numbing boredom in meetings at work? Or do we have to look to TV to get anything like that?
Food for thought.
-D