Looking back on all of
the blog entries and assignments for this FYS course, I learned a lot. I learned
that fairytales are not just “fun and games” and bedtime stories told to young
children. They have a deeper meaning and a deeper connection to life. Sometimes
fairytales include the coming-of-age of a woman, the menstrual cycle, oedipal
conflicts, rape, and rags to riches, magic, sorcery, and more. There is a meaning
to all fairytales. I have learned that Walt Disney altered and changed a lot of
the fairy tales made by the Grimm brothers. This was because Walt Disney wanted
the fairy tales to be more appealing and children friendly. 
When having to complete the oral presentation of The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim
“The Jealous Queen in ‘Snow White’ and the Myth of Oedipus,” I learned about a curse
cast on a haughty father in relation to the evil stepmother in Snow White. “Snow
White’s story teaches that just because one has reached physical maturity, one
is by no means intellectually and emotionally ready for adulthood, as
represented by marriage. Growth and time are needed before the mature
personality is formed and the old conflicts are incorporated. Only then are
they ready for a partner of the other sex, and the intimate relation with them
needed for the achievement of mature adulthood.” Those parents who (like the
queen) act out parental oedipal jealousies nearly destroy their child and
certainly destroy themselves. In the end, the vain, jealous, and destructive
queen is forced to put on red-hot shoes and then dance until she dies.
Untrammeled sexual jealousy, which tries to ruin others, destroys itself (as
symbolized not only by the fiery red shoes but by death from dancing in them).
Symbolically, the story tells that uncontrolled passion must be restrained or
it will become one’s undoing. Only the death of the jealous queen (the
elimination of all outer and inner turbulence) can make for a happy world and
rid oedipal jealousies of child and mother.
This class was very interesting to be in and I enjoyed
it. We have grown as a class and we are all now friends inside and outside of
the classroom.
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