Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves, the eternal favourite among children, too contains important lesson to be learnt for life. To those who have read this story, it is known that Snow-White’s gentle, loving nature melted the hearts of the seven dwarves who later saved her life. In our life, we often tend to ignore the down-trodden ones and befriend the influential people, but as we make out in the story it is Snow-White’s rich stepmother who betrayed her and the dwarves were the ones who welcomed her with open arms. There is also the woodcutter who was sent to kill her but who did not do so because she had been a kind and generous princess. So also, we must really appreciate people who love us from the heart and not who show false affectations. Secondly, the incident of the stepmother poisoning her with a red apple is somewhat exemplary of the underlying meaning contained in the poem ‘The Poison Tree’ by William Blake. The red apple, apart from signifying temptations, also symbolizes the Forbidden Apple from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden which led Eve to sin (Genesis, Old Testament). This is a lesson for us that we must avoid attractive temptations at any cost as they may prove to be the death of us.

        Fairytales seem to be very simple stories, but there’s more to them then what meets the eye! G.K Chesterton said ‘Fairytales do not tell children the dragons exist; they tell the dragons can be killed.’ Children do not need fairytales to tell them that fairies, dragons, etc exist. They already know that. Instead fairytales tell that good always succeed over evil, as in Hansel and Gretel, we read how Hansel and Gretel, who are good, escape from the wicked witch. Other examples can be Sleeping beauty, where we are told how Sleeping Beauty after much catastrophe, at last finds bliss and triumph over the wicked witch. Fairytales are narrated to children when they are young and this is very essential indeed, for if in the launching of our lives our minds are manipulated by the beauty, innocence and the morals dwelling in these tales, we will be able to trace the optimistic side of happenings. The fairies are like our wildest dreams, which seem unreachable but we can make them plausible. As we grow up we cease to believe in these supernatural and fantasy-based characters. But as we read in the famous story ‘Pandora and the Hope Fairy’, there are loads of evil, treachery, malevolence in this world but there also resides a fairy called Hope, because of whom we are able to survive these anxieties of life.

             Well, I don’t know about you, but I do believe in fairies and the fairytales…and who knows, I may someday meet one because, after all, believing is just the beginning! And as J.M Barrie said, ‘When you say I don’t believe in fairies, a fairy somewhere drops dead.’ And I wouldn’t want anyone dead on my account, would you? So here I end my piece of writing…with the hope that you enjoyed reading it.

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Well, friends as we grow out of childhood, we lose belief in fairytales, we laugh at them...
but I for one am still fascinated by the world of fairytales and this is an essay in which I have analysed some of the hidden meanings contained in the fairytales we learnt when we were very small.

The lessons we gather from the fairytales are in fact, the basis upon which the very present society exists!

updated Jul 17 '10 by moon_princess