The Final Exam is TOMORROW (cue the ominous music)

Like I said last time, I already had two finals last week.  They weren't too bad, and only one (political science) had any essay questions.  I answered the one about systems and chose fascism to discuss, because I really remembered the class we spent on it.  The interesting thing about the English exam is that it's on two different days; we're doing the essay question tomorrow, and our study guide actually gave us the entire question that will be on the test.

The last unit of the course was on writing exam essays, so giving us the question made sense, but I'm thinking now that it was kind of diabolical, too.  All weekend long I was obsessing about it.  According to the prof, the verb in the question is the key to answering it, and the verb in our question is "analyze," which, as it turns out, is the most difficult one.  Actually, what we're going to do is sort of a mini version of a critical analysis.  She gave us a three-page handout by Bruno Bettelheim about what fairy tales do in terms of childhood development and showed us a couple of fairy tales on video.  We also read the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, which was a real surprise -- no fairy godmother, three balls, and her father is STILL ALIVE through the whole thing.  That was the thing that convinced me that Bettelheim was right when he said that it's a story about sibling rivalry.  The father goes along with whatever the stepmother and stepsisters choose to do to Cinderella.

The problem I'm having here, though, isn't with Cinderella, since that's not the story being used for the exam.  I never even heard of the story on the test.  It's The Three Ravens, and it's about a princess who swears not to speak for three years, three months, and three days in order to break the spell her evil stepmother put on her brothers (she turned them into ravens).  A lot of things happen during the three years that test her ability to keep to her vow, but she doesn't give up and eventually breaks the spell (just as she's about to be burned at the stake for being a witch!).  I can't make up my mind about what to do with this story, but I'll have to decide before noon tomorrow.

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What are fairy tales for, anyway?

Image via Wikipedia

The final exam essay question seems harder already:  we have to analyze the fairy tale (it's called The Three Ravens, and we won't see the video until Wednesday!) using a critical model (Toffee is absolutely obsessed with critical models) from the handout she gave us last week.  The handout is a short reading by Bruno Bettelheim, who apparently was a very controversial guy.  I get most of what he's saying, I think, but without knowing The Three Ravens, I'm not sure what I can apply to the story.  She showed us Hans My Hedgehog (it's kind of a Beauty-and-the-Beast story) yesterday, which was pretty weird, and I figured out a few things from the handout that could apply to that.
For one thing, Hans's father doesn't love him, which is why Hans leaves home.  I can see where a kid whose father is kind of cold might get some help from the story, since we find out that the father realizes he cares about his son after he leaves AND since Hans does live happily ever after in the end.  The story also shows that you have to keep trying if you ever want to be happy, which is something that is mentioned in the handout.  There is one thing that I wish the model did explain, which is why Hans has a horse-sized rooster that he can saddle up and ride!  No help there. 
It is interesting, to look at fairy tales this way, I mean, and I can see where they can give kids a way to think about stuff that bothers them.  It just never occurred to me that the stories had a purpose.

The article below has a really good discussion of kids and fairy tales (and it talks about Bettelheim, too).

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