For my literary analysis I read Hans Christian Andersen 's The Little Mermaid, and watched Disney 's rendition of The Little Mermaid. I felt that these stories had more differences than similarities. Where Hans Christian Andersen focused more on the consequences of becoming human, the movie focused on Ariel winning the prince over. While reading this story I took note of the fact that even though The Little Mermaid was a normal human, in the end she still didn 't get what made her happy. The movie on the other hand, gave Ariel everything she wanted along the way for conforming to normalities of the world above the sea. Though the movie is a nice fantasy I feel the story is simply more important than the movie because it doesn’t encourage conformity. …show more content…
King Triton had a lovely castle with a large garden in front of it, and all the daughters had their own garden plots. The older sisters all decorated their plots with objects from the world above the sea, but the youngest only wanted red flowers in her garden, and a marble statue of a young boy. The little mermaid loved nothing more than hearing stories of humans. her grandmother told her that when she turns fifteen she will be allowed to swim to the top of the ocean and look at the human world. This excited the little mermaid, and every night she would watch the moon, and stars as ships sailed by overhead. Year after year went by as each older sister went to the surface and brought back fascinating tales to the other sisters until we came to the little mermaid’s fifteenth birthday. The day the little mermaid turned fifteen her she swam to the top of the water the first chance she got. After arriving at the surface, she observed as much as she could, when she noticed a cabin on a party ship. She bobbed up and down with the water, looking in at the party. The person she noticed most was the young handsome prince. As the night got later the little mermaid wanted nothing more than to stay, but suddenly a storm blew in. The storm quickly got tearing apart the ship, and taking the prince down with it. She couldn’t let the prince drown because he could not live under the sea with her, so she saved the prince, and brought him back from the water hoping he would survive. As time passed, she continued watching humans, wanting nothing more than to see the prince again. The little mermaid later talks to her grandmother about humans, and discovers
Film analysis with a critical eye can give the viewer how animation giant Disney uses literary element to relay key messages to the audience. Walt Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” is a perfect example how different literary theories like ‘the Marxist theory’ and ‘Archetypal theory’ can be embedded in the simplest of the fairy tales. The different literary elements in the movie, shows a person how characters like ‘the banker’ and the setting of the houses helps to portray the socio-economic differences in New Orleans at that time. Applying ‘the Marxist theory’ and ‘the Archetypal theory’ to the plot, characters and the setting, shows how movies can be a medium to confront social issues and to prove that all fairy tales are of the same base.
Anderson, Hans Christian. “The Little Mermaid.” Folk and Fairy Tales. 3rd ed. Eds. Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek. Toronto: Broadview, 2002.
We all grew up hoping that we were the princesses who met the dreamy prince and lived ‘happily ever after’ like in a fairytale.People debate over whether or not Disney fairytales are beneficial for children. Like Melissa Taylor the author of the piece ‘10 reasons why kids need to read non disney fairy tales’, I am against disneyfied fairy tales. In this essay I will argue on why kids should not only watch disney fairytales but also the real versions.
Lord of the Flies is a novel written by William Golding in 1954 about a group of young British boys who have been stranded alone together on an island with no adults. During the novel the diverse group of boys struggle to create structure within a society that they constructed by themselves. Golding uses many unique literary devices including characterization, imagery, symbolism and many more. The three main characters, Ralph, Piggy, and Jack are each representative of the three main literary devices, ethos, logos, and pathos. Beyond the characterization the novel stands out because of Golding’s dramatic use of objective symbolism, throughout the novel he uses symbols like the conch, fire, and Piggy’s glasses to represent how power has evolved and to show how civilized or uncivilized the boys are acting. It is almost inarguable that the entire novel is one big allegory in itself, the way that Golding portrays the development of savagery among the boys is a clear representation of how society was changing during the time the novel was published. Golding is writing during
A little girl sits on the floor with her gaze fixed on the television screen in front of her, watching magical images dance before her eyes and catchy songs flow through her ears. Even though she had seen it at least twenty times before, she still loved The Little Mermaid just as much as she did the first time she watched it. As she watched it, she longed to be a beautiful mermaid with a curvy body and wonderful singing voice like Ariel. She longed to be saved by the handsome Prince Eric, and fall in love and live happily ever-after like Ariel did. In today’s society, women strive to achieve equality between the sexes. Despite the tremendous steps that have been taken towards reaching gender equality, mainstream media contradicts these accomplishments with stereotypes of women present in Walt Disney movies. These unrealistic stereotypes may be detrimental to children because they grow up with a distorted view of how men and women interact. Disney animated films assign gender roles to characters, and young children should not be exposed to inequality between genders because its effect on their view of what is right and wrong in society is harmful to their future.
Although Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” published in 1837, contains many patronizing nineteenth-century attitudes towards women, a value system that at least acknowledges the legitimacy of femininity shapes the fairytale. Unfortunately, Walt Disney’s 1989 film version of “The Little Mermaid” eliminates the values that affirm femininity in the original story (Trites 145)
In fact, the movies do not even have to show the mermaids as evil creatures to incorporate details or ideas from Scottish Folklore, as shown by the famous Disney movie, The Little Mermaid. In this tale, Ariel has an amazing voice that she is loved for and is a major part of the plot (Johanningmeier scene 2). Ariel’s voice is a major part of her character as a mermaid. When she becomes human, she loses her voice entirely, associating the amazing voice with being a mermaid. This emphasizes the trait from Scottish Folklore of mermaids being creatures that possess unnaturally beautiful voices. King Triton is originally spoken of because of his powers over the sea (Johanningmeier scene 1). The fishermen claim that as a merperson, he has the ability to control the ocean and its waves. It is no wonder, with many of Scotland’s folk tales describing mermaids having various magical powers. Even with the entirety of the movie showing the goodness and beauty of mermaids, the writer of The Little Mermaid still managed to sneak in a reference to a darker side of the sea dwelling creatures. When the fishermen sing about mermaids, they include the lyrics “...Look out, lad, a mermaid be waitin' for you, In mysterious fathoms below,” (Johanningmeier scene 1). This paints mermaids as creatures that are waiting to enchant and drown the men on board. Even in a children’s movie with nice mermaids, Scotland’s
Produced in 2009, The Frog Princess is a Disney animation inspired by the Grimm Brothers’ fairytale, The Frog Prince. Both The Frog Princess and The Frog Prince deal with a multiplicity of issues, all of which contribute to supporting positive messages and morals (Ceaser, 2009). However, though The Frog Princess is based on a classic fairytale, it is far from being the same. The writers at Disney have taken a classic fairytale and created a “Monster” (Prince, 2001). This essay will examine the evolution of the original Grimm Brothers’ fairytale, the messages both main characters represent, and how the adaptation to fit a modern child readership diminishes a classic fairytale. Through discussing these arguments, this paper will prove that Disney’s adaptation into The Princess and The Frog is counter-productive in representing the original story’s messages, morals, and values.
In the famous story that we all were read as children, Mary Poppins, the author P.L. Travers depicts a story of an astonishing nanny who arrives at the Banks household to look after the four children, Michael, Jane, and the twins. Jane and Michael live pretty boring lives before Mary Poppins, the nanny, arrives. These two children are very critical thinkers, and it is apparent that they receive these traits from their parents, so because of this Poppins challenges their beliefs when she arrives. Through many adventures and the character of Poppins, Jane and Michael come to learn that there is not always an answer for all of their questions. To their displeasing, the nanny tells them that they have to use their imagination to come up with answers to all of their questions. Eventually, the children are able to discover their childhood, that seemed to be lost, once the nanny leaves. Throughout the book Poppins takes the children on journeys to help them discover what they are missing out on and help them regain that ability to make believe just as every other kid in the world does.
When the word “fairytale” is mentioned, nearly everyone thinks of light-hearted stories with friendly characters and happy endings. However, these are not the ideas that classic fairytales originally sparked. In fact, numerous modern Disney movies were based off stories that were not so sugar coated. In the 19th century, the Brothers Grimm were responsible for multiple of these popular children’s tales. The Disney remakes of classic fairytales such as Cinderella, Tangled, and Snow White exclude the dark, twisted themes that are significant in the Brothers Grimm fairytales, because society tendencies continue to evolve toward sheltering and overprotecting young children.
In both Hans Christian Andersons “The Little Mermaid,” and Disney’s version of the story, the main character— a young and beautiful mermaid— waits anxiously for her fifteenth birthday to venture from her father’s underwater castle to the world above the water. As the story carries on the mermaids priorities change; her modest and selfless nature is revealed towards the end in Andersen’s version. However, Disney’s version encompasses a rather shallow ending and plot throughout. The theme found in comparing the two versions reveal that Andersen’s substance trumps Disney’s entertainment factor in fairy tales.
“The mermaid swam with her prince toward the beach. She laid him in the fine white sand, taking care to place his head in the warm sunshine, far from the water. She also had to give up her voice, which she had done so willingly, endure tremendous amounts of pain to have the legs of a human, and give up her life as a mermaid as well as never be able to be with her sisters at the bottom of the ocean again. The little mermaid passed all of the tests that the universe threw at her, but in the end, she did not get to marry the prince and this is a great example of a message from the author that life can be unfair sometimes.
Right off, it is apparent that many of the characters struggle to feel comfortable in their own skin. This is especially prominent in Coralie, who faces many challenges in relation to her appearance, often putting herself down for the way that she looks. This reveals that this problem doesn’t merely exist today alone, but extends back as far as the early twentieth century. I was astonished to see a universal problem such as this so pronounced in a remarkably different era, despite the drastic change in women’s rights. Within the novel, it seems that whenever Coralie talks about her hatred regarding her webbed fingers, it stems from her father’s rule of wearing white gloves, as he does, “not wish [of her] to be thought of with disdain” (Hoffman,
Over centuries, fairy tales were passed down by word of mouth to portray a story with a hidden meaning. As these fairy tales were passed on they traveled to different destinations and were modified to conform to other cultures. One example of this is the story of Grapnel. Most people are familiar with the Brothers Grimm version of Rapunzel; however, an earlier variant that comes from Italy was the forerunner to the Grimm version. The Italian version, Petrosinella, written by Giambattista Basile, is an example of how culture has an influence on literature. Although this is the case, both fairy tale versions portray jungian archetypes that are often misinterpreted by mainstream portrayals of these fairy tales.
In today 's society, it is normal for young children to believe in fairytales. These fairytales are normally seen throughout books and movies but also through parents reading them as bedtime stories. These tales in our society have unrecognized hidden guidelines for ethics and behaviors that we provide for children. One such children 's story is Disney’s Cinderella, this film seems to be a simple tale of a young woman whose wishes work out as to be expected. This tale reflects the expectations of women 's actions and beliefs of a proper women.