About the warning role of fairy tales

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät), course: Writing the term paper, language: English, abstract: In this paper, I will compare some of the original fairy tales with their new versions and analyze how the decrease in violence and brutality affects their meaning. Therefore, I will refer to fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel or Snow White and provide details on how violence contributes positively to the storyline of their fairy tales in general. In addition, I will deal with the change in the depiction of violence in fairy tales and show the consequences that arise from the transformation of their original plot.

The role that fairy tales once played is no longer the same today. When the first fairy tales were written, the authors also pursued the intention to convey moral values and virtues in addition to the aspect of entertainment. Therefore, violence and brutality have often been used to warn of possible dangers and emergencies and also to provide a deterrent example of what can happen if someone acts inappropriately. However, the use of violent and brutal acts helped to emphasize the fairy tale's warning role. Thus, fairy tales also positively contributed to the upbringing of children by teaching them how to deal with basic human conflicts, desires, and relationships.

As fairy tales have become increasingly interesting to society in recent years, they have been rewritten, turned into movies and also modified or adapted to today's times under different circumstances. Nevertheless, many ideas were lost from the original versions and can no longer convey the same values that they were supposed to in the past. Violence and brutality made an important contribution in the original versions and created an appealing effect for the viewers, which no longer completely exists in its intended form.