Only in a Fairy
Tale:
Discerning the Form
through the Art of Illustration
Part 4
Reality
of the Brutality
Fairy tales,
especially from the Brothers Grimm, have some surprisingly violent moments and
perhaps even more interesting is the almost blasé way that these moments are
related, meaning that these moments are not really dwelled upon or emotionalized,
they simply are. These include
everything from The Juniper Tree,
where a young boy is murdered by his mother and feasted upon by his father to
the abducting and massacring of maidens in Fitcher’s
Bird and the more well known wolf surgery scene in Red Riding Hood. More
than most versions of Red Riding Hood,
Zwerger’s illustrations emphasize the surgical procedure that is about to
happen. While we as readers must
suspend our disbelief in coming to terms with the fact that Red and her
Grandmother are still alive after being devoured by the wolf, there is nothing
magical in the practicality of exhuming them from within the wolf. The woodcutter takes on the role of
doctor in Zwerger’s scene.
Moreover, Zwerger does not shy away from actually showing us, in the
moment, what it would have looked like to see Grandmother coming out of the incised
belly of the wolf, perhaps all that is missing is some blood, or maybe the
woodcutter is just that talented.
I was Red Riding Hood for Halloween. :)
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine recently read the Roald Dahl version of Little Red Riding Hood and pronounced it her favorite version.
Hahaha I just read that this past week in my Golden Age of children's lit class! Very different, but definitely interesting and totally something he would do. There's also a retelling by Dahl on The three little pigs, and Red Riding Hood comes into it and sort of "helps" them out...
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