The Faces of Evil in Fairy Tales

As children, we hear many stories about the interactions between good and evil. Since each story or fable have different characters, the description of evil and good are different from one another. The good character will have different characteristic compared to evil one.

“There are relatively few ways to do good, but countless ways to do evil, which can therefore have a much greater impact on our lives, and the lives of others beings capable of suffering. “ written by Plato.

This saying could be the same for how the characteristics of good and evil effect how we see characters in fairy tales.

Good and evil are different entities, they are opposites and how they are depicted in children fables effect how people react to them.

In most fairy tales, the main character are children. Since these tales were originally created to teach children a lesson, they created characters that are close to themselves. In Little Red Riding Hood, Gustave Dore depicted Little Red as a normal young girl in the 17th century, she looks innocent, healthy, and most importantly she looks a human child. They represent life, youth, future, happiness, and unrelenting trust.

Consequently evil is portrayed differently compared to their counterparts. They are not seen as youthful, happiness, or life. They give off the feeling of sinful, foul, wickedness and villainy.

Like Plato’s quote, there are countless ways to do evil. There are countless ways to illustrate evil. In fable like Red Ridin Hood, the villain is the wolf. This was the age of when Christianity dominated faith and government in Europe, Christians believe that wolves were servents of Satan. Reasons to why they believe this is because wolves hunt the symbol of innocent christians, the lamb. Wolves are depicted as evil creatures that hunt the christian people. With wolves being represented this way, parents feared for the lives of their children. Since children are so easily trusting towards creatures and strangers.

Another reason why the wolf is considered evil is because people didn’t know much about them other than their own beliefs. They were not able to control them like dogs, and they were unpredictable creatures. People like the idea of control over their own lives and knowledge.

With people wanting understanding over their lives, they can be deceived easily, just like Eve from The Book of Genesis. This religious story of the first sin has given the snake as well known face of evil and a untrustworthy character.