Folk and Fairy Tales

               From Annie to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to The Great Gatsby , “rags to riches” stories are extremely prevalent in American society, reflecting the American ideals of being able to come to the country and, with or without hard work, become something great. This idea is especially prevalent in Cinderella stories such as Disney’s Cinderella and Pretty Woman.   Even though the original story is German in origin, the idea of “rise tales” appeals to all peoples, but especially Americans, one of the reasons that both of Disney’s Cinderella stories did so well when they came out. Pretty Woman was just as much of a success, being one of the most popular romantic comedy stories and winning Julia Roberts a Golden Globe Award. Those in lower classes look to the story for inspiration, believing it an example of subverting class structures seen as rigid and unchanging. If Cinderella can do it, wh...

The music video for Rammstein’s “Sonne” has many elements that are very different from other versions of the story but is also very similar. A common symbol in the different depictions of Snow White is of the glass coffin. In “The Young Slave”, when Lisa is cursed, her mother puts her in “seven caskets of crystal, one within the other” (92) where she stays until the curse is broken. Likewise, In the Grimm Brothers’ version of “Snow White” the dwarves find Snow White lifeless on the floor after eating the poison apple and “They were about to bury her, but she still looked like a living person with beautiful red cheeks” so they put her in “a transparent glass coffin” and brought “the coffin up to the top of a mountain” where “one of them was always there to keep vigil” (101). In Ann Sexton’s “Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs” the seven dwarves cannot bring themselves to bury her, so they “bury her in the black ground / so they made a glass coffin / and set it upon the seventh mountain...