Hinson Dong, Period 6, 9/29/22

Hinson Dong, Period 6, 9/29/22, Modern Mythology Blog 2023, 

Literacy and Learning

    Given the book during the summer, it was pretty surprising to be reading Cinderella

again and I wasn’t really expecting much. This fiction fairy tale was pretty familiar to me as I

have watched the Disney version and read one of the versions before. However, that was years

ago since I still had the understanding and the thought that these fairy tales are “meant for

children.” After reading the versions of Cinderella, I realized that these Cinderella stories are

much more different in terms of the addition to many cultures and their versions of Cinderella. It

is much more different than the original type of Cinderella which I considered to be meant for

children. After learning about the criticisms during class, I saw that these versions are

interpreted differently throughout the perspective of different age groups. Seeing that one can

apply Marxist criticism, gender criticism, or psychoanalytic criticism on a fairy tale like this. What

was once a story that inspired and taught children is now something seen differently by an adult.

For fairy tales now, I can see that. Maybe one that has seen something as a kid may not have

as much experience as a person that’s more grown up and would be able to criticize the story

line. For example, we may see Cinderella as a story that has a happy ending at the end just like

a normal plot for a fairy tale. But now we can see it as why does Cinderella depend on another

in order to live that happily ever after. Why is there always a prince, or a god mother, or a

forgiving ending? These are now seen by me and I can see now where this can be interpreted

differently by one in another age group. I think that this can be applied to another. As something

that I’ve read as a kid can be interpreted differently by an older individual.

    Also applied to other fairy tales such as one that we read in class “Where The Wild

Things Are,” which was one of the stories I read a while back to come and see another

perspective of this story. This perspective of an older me was way much more different than me

years ago. As a teenager, I can now see that this story shows the kid in the wrong and how he

opens up due to his imagination. Now I’m able to see that fairy tales are not just “meant for kids”

as we are able to interpret these fairy tales differently and see the more stereotypical problems

of it. I think this can apply to life by saying, “some stuff can be seen in different perspectives.”