From birth until I was almost five my grandmother lived with my parents and me. My grandmother, who was a Russian immigrant, spoke in her special accent. She had been in the country long enough to get a firm grasp on the English language, but, like most immigrants, she kept her accent for all to hear. Her sentences were not broken or fractured, just a little jumbled up. She would confuse herself of what order the words went. But, looking back now, I do not believe that it was because English was a second language. The five years that my grandmother lived with my parents and me, she would babysit me every day when my parents were working; my father at a factory in Jackson, and my mother at a travel agency in McKenzie. From eight until five it was our time. My grandmother never read stories to me from a book. She would always tell the stories that her father told her, and she told her children. They were fairy tales, some Americanized and some were the original stories. I was told Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel along with less popular fairy tales by the Grimm brothers, all recounted by my grandmother, who added her own unique spin to the story. I realize now that when my grandmother began to read from books, there was something wrong. She went from telling me stories from her memory to reading the same stories from books. She picked up new stores as well; my favorite was a story about an elephant. My grandmother read the elephant story to me so many times, I practically had it memorized. One story she never had to read from a book was a story about a baby polar bear. From this story she gave me the pet name “Pola.” It was a simple story about how a baby polar bear lost its way home and her journey home to her mo... ... middle of paper ... ...tal stay. The doctors said there was nothing more they could do for my grandmother, there was a inoperable tumor in her brain. The doctors sent her home with an IV of pain relievers and a lifetime expectancy of a few days. Those last few days are a blur except for one event. While the family was buzzing around taking care of everything, I climbed into my grandmother’s bed, ready to read the elephant book. My grandmother was weak, but she smiled when I opened the book. I cannot say if I actually read the book or if I retold it from memory, but I recited the whole story from beginning to end to my grandmother. She was proud of me, she could not tell me, but I knew. At the end of that particular day, my grandmother passed away. But my grandmother showed me the magic that is contained in stories, and knowing that she loved stories gave me the drive to start reading.
Like many other renowned novels aimed at children, George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin draws extensively from the folk tradition in his telling of the tale. Many of the figures presented, such as the nurse and Curdie, have precedent in the tradition, but the grandmother in particular stands out. Archetypally, she is a variant on the Old Man, though she bears the undeniable touch of the supernatural as seen in common folklore - at times she is otherworldly and some of her actions and abilities are of the sort frequently associated with witches.
Everyone’s childhood was filled with fairytales, and stories that will forever be programed into our minds even memory that continues from generation to generations. You’ll remember in school your first book were both the three little pigs and even Little Red Riding Hood. Yes, good old fairytales who knew when you was reading the most famous little red riding hood it was actually a lot history behind the tale. Just to allow a slight backstory about the tale we were taught of the story going like this little girl goes to bring her grandmother a basket of sweet on the way she encounters a wolf she tells him she on her way to her grandmother’s house from there the wolf bets the little to the grandmothers house eats the hopeless grandmother then
It had been a cold, snowy day, just a few days after Thanksgiving. My grandmother became immensely ill and unable to care for herself. We knew she had health problems but her sudden turn for the worst was so unexpected and therefore we weren’t prepared for the decisions that had to be made and the guilt we would feel. Where would grandma live? Would she be taken care of? So many concerns floated around. A solution was finally found and one that was believed to be the best or so we thought.
There she received an excellent education provided by her mother. The young girl, although very imaginative and bright had an intense and inexplicable hatred for reading; however, she loved stories and so she begged her mother and father and brother and anyone who would give her the time of day, to tell her tales filled with laughter, romance, tragedy, and history. She grew up on the Grimm Fairy Tales, on the oral histories of ancient civilizations, and heart wrenching summaries of Shakespeare’s greatest writings and contributions to the English speaking
As I walked through the door of the funeral home, the floral arrangements blurred into a sea of vivid colors. Wiping away my tears, I headed over to the collage of photographs of my grandfather. His smile seemed to transcend the image on the pictures, and for a moment, I could almost hear his laughter and see his eyes dancing as they tended to do when he told one of his famous jokes. My eyes scanned the old photographs, searching for myself amidst the images. They came to rest on a photo of Grandpa holding me in his lap when I was probably no more than four years old. The flowers surrounding me once again blended into an array of hues as I let my mind wander……
Fairytales, like other commonly performed cultural texts, must be seen in some sense as methods of instruction. We tell stories to our children to entertain and amuse them, to ...
This modern fairy tale contains diverse characters but none of them are as important as the grandmother. In fact, through her narration the reader gets the basic information concerning the familial context. The story revolves around a grandmother, a mother and a granddaughter, which thus sets the point of view of the story, the grandmother is the narrator therefore the reader gets her perception. Besides the domestic context, the lack of other contextual clues, such as the time or the location of the story, gives room to her story and her final purpose: teaching and, at the same time, protecting her grand-daughter from risks represented by men here symbolized by a wolf. The way this unnamed grandmother reveals her life exemplifies two properties of fairy tale as mentioned by Marina Warner in “The Old Wives' Tale”: “Fairy tales exchange knowledge [using morals] between an older [most of the time feminine] voice of experience and a younger audience” (314). As suggested in the text, fairy tales are a way to teach insights of life through simple stories directed to, most of the time, younger generations. Most of the time because fairy tales' moral work on dif...
Once upon a time, there was a literary genre commonly know as fairy tales. They were mystical and wonderful and a child’s fantasy. These fairy tales were drastically misunderstood throughout many centuries, however. They endured a hard life of constant changing and editing to fit what the people of that time wanted. People of our own time are responsible for some of the radical changes endured by this undeserved genre. Now, these fairy tales had a young friend named Belle. Belle thought she knew fairy tales very well, but one day she found out just how wrong she was.
This modern fairy tale contains diverse characters but none of them is as important as the grandmother. Through her narration, the reader gets all the information needed to understand the story. Indeed, by telling her own story she provides the reader the familial context in which the story is set with her granddaughter and her daughter but even more important, she provides details on her own life which should teach and therefore protect her grand-daughter from men, and then save her to endure or experience her past griefs. This unnamed grand-mother is telling her life under a fairy tale form which exemplify two major properties of fairy tale, as mentioned by Marina Warner in “The Old Wives' Tale”: “Fairy tales exchange knowledge [through the moral] between an older [most of the time feminine] voice of experience and a younger audience”. As suggested in the text, fairy tales are a way to teach insights of life through simple stories directed to, most of the time, younger generations. Most of the time because fairy tales work on different levels of moral which are directed to categories of people, for instance in “Little Red Riding Hood” the moral ...
There are many fairy tales told to children in the United States. My personal favorite was, is, and always will be the tale of Cinderella. The story is as follows: A young girl's mother dies, leaving her alone with her father. As the little girl grows up, she and her father become very close, and he treats her like a little princess. One day, he tells her that he is remarrying. At first, the woman and her two daughters are kind to the girl, but this all soon ends. Shortly after the marriage, the father dies, and from that point on, the "wicked stepmother" and "evil stepsisters" rename the girl "Cinderella" (after the cinders she is forced to sweep from the fireplace). They treat her as an indentured servant, ordering her around, and being very cruel in general.
To most people, when they hear the words Fairy and Tale, the first thing that comes to mind is the stories that they either grew up to reading as a child or stories that they would read to their children. Fairy tales are stories that are often verbally told and passed down from generation to generation. More specifically, these stories have a different twist to them each time they are told because they are often used to teach a certain lesson. Jacob and Wilhelm Grim were the first individuals to take to take these tales and write them down. Angela Carter and Tanith Lee both took the Grimms' Little Red Cap which was better known as Little Red Riding Hood and created their own detailed and less child friendly versions of the story. Both of their
On the day my father died, I remember walking home from school with my cousin on a November fall day, feeling the falling leaves dropping off the trees, hitting my cold bare face. Walking into the house, I could feel the tension and knew that something had happened by the look on my grandmother’s face. As I started to head to the refrigerator, my mother told me to come, and she said that we were going to take a trip to the hospital.
The fairytale is not just about her journey to grandma’s house, or everyone knowing Little Red Riding Hood because she is a sweet little girl, the fairytale is giving us messages that we should help our elders and we should kind.
My grandmother used to say to me, “Isaiah, your life is going to flash before your eyes.” I was close to my grandmother throughout my childhood. At the age of eight my teacher instructed me to write a story about my favorite person, I remember the project requirements like it was yesterday. I went to the stationery store with my grandmother and she purchased red construction paper. I had the entire weekend to create the story; it was a difficult decision for me to make, it was the first time I ever had to choose among my family members. I weighed the pros and cons of memories I had with all of my relatives and it narrowed down to my grandmother. I created a two column layout, I drew my grandmother and myself on the left side and I wrote the story on the right side.
Normally, when one was a child, our parents would tell us fairy tales as bed time stories, or to simply entertain us. This is a worldwide tradition in which every parent tells their child the stories they were told when they were little, or new stories. There are infinite stories to be told as well as infinite stories that have already been written or told. The stories told by our parents have influenced us and still influence us in our beliefs and values today. Throughout our childhood, we have been told many stories that teach us to be brave and courageous, respect others, love ourselves and others, to obey orders, and even to help and