I’ve tried to avoid blogging about the grim parts of the Brother’s Grimm fairy tales, but this week is almost impossible. I could talk about the goofy stories we read this week instead: how dogs fare very well in these fairy tales, and Old Sultan is no exception. But….the more interesting stories this week were Fitcher’s Bird and The Juniper Tree.

I’m just going to have to face up to these darker stories.

I’d never read either of these before and found them almost as gruesome as The Robber Bridegroom from week 10. (I found The Robber Bridegroom story beyond disturbing.)

Dominique Marie over at the blog Mique Reads taught me to look at these stories another way with her blog on The Robber Bridegroom which you can read here. (She writes an insightful blog about a woman’s intuition.)

I’ll try to block out the gore and focus on the arc of the protagonists, who are often characterized by bravery, resilience, and cleverness.

In Fitcher’s Bird, we have a wizard who is kidnapping young girls, one at a time, and they are never heard from again. Turns out, he treats them well as long as they don’t go into one particular room or he will kill them. So where does the trouble come in? He tests them by giving them an egg to take care of and a key to the room they’re not supposed to go into. The first two sisters fail the test and he kills them in a gruesome way. The third sister also fails the test, but she plans ahead (with the egg) before she opens the door, and is able to not only bring her sisters back to life, but save them all.

In The Juniper Tree, we have a messed-up stepmother. The story starts out similar to Snow White, but takes a turn when we find out the hoped-for baby is a boy. The mother dies and a new mother comes along who is so jealous of the boy that she kills him, and makes her own daughter think that she is the one who accidentally killed her brother. Believe it or not, it gets worse from here before it gets better. Let me skip ahead….the stepmother is killed and the boy comes back to life to live happily ever after.

I honestly don’t know what to do with these stories. I don’t want to read them. I don’t want these thoughts in my head. Many of my friends (and some family members) love the horror genre. Why? Just why?

A funny meme says (paraphrasing here):

If you’re feeling lonely, all you have to do is turn out the lights and watch a horror movie. You won’t feel alone for long.

LOL. Is that why people like horror?!?!? That creepy-crawly feeling that you’re being watched. Stalked?

Okay, let’s focus.

What can we learn from Grimm when it comes to writing horror? Let me close my eyes and quickly list some tropes and ideas I’ve noticed.

• Anticipation (missing girls; locked doors; rumors; warnings not to go places; jealousy; general sense of unease, threat of being married to an evil man)
• Blood.
• Chopped up bodies.
• More chopped up bodies.
• Inanimate objects or animals speaking for the dead; exposing the killer
• The dead are avenged; usually with the death of the killer.
• The protagonist overcomes the antagonist in a satisfying way—revealing the antagonist’s sins, even if the protagonist has been killed, as they manage to stick around in some form
• Strong sense of justice.
• Protagonist made whole again.
• Happily Ever After (!)

I’m sure there are more, but I’m peeking between my fingers covering my eyes. If there are more horror bits in other stories, I’ll come back and add to the list.