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Death
as Complicated by Fairy Tales and Childhood Games
Abbye Needham
Death affects us from the very beginnings of our
lives. As children, we grow and develop perceptions
concerning death. One of the key instruments in developing
these concepts of death lies in our early childhood
when stories are read to us and we play games to
amuse ourselves. These stories or fairy tales
give us insights which are broadened as we grow
toward adulthood, and the games are ways to face
death even if we don’t realize it at the time.
The portrayal of death in fairy tales and childhood
games plays a key role in determining childhood perceptions
of death, sometimes complicating the notion that it is
a “real” event.
Perhaps before one can see the importance death
holds in fairy tales and games he/she must first
realize a child’s ability to comprehend death. Children
develop at different rates, but no matter the speed
of development, by the time children reach maturity
they can usually understand death. Casey
refers to Nagy when she states, “The empirical
evidence on age supports a notion that children
achieve a complete understanding of death only after
the age of nine” (1). A child must come to
understand and gain knowledge of the concepts of
death. According to Casey, the four most common concepts
are universality, irreversibility, non-functionality,
and causality (1). Two of these concepts dealing
with the reality of death, universality and irreversibility,
are complicated by fairy tales and games.
Since children are still forming ideas about death,
fairy tales and games greatly influence their thought
patterns concerning the nature of death.
No matter what this study shows, the important thing
is that early portrayals of death play an important
part in a child’s development; fairy tales
and games, dominant sources of information to young children,
form the building blocks of death comprehension.
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In fairy tales death is portrayed in a number of ways,
from being merely mentioned, as in “Bluebeard”
where “the girl enters the forbidden room and finds it full
of blood and dead people,” to the brutal slaying
of the evil character (Bettelheim 299). Corr
agrees with the fact that death is present in childhood
tales when he states, “Children’s fairy
tales, whether oral or written, are also full of references
to death” (249). Most fairy tales depict
the death of an evil character as a violent and brutal death.
These brutal deaths are mostly foreign deaths (or deaths
that children do not normally hear about or witness)
they are not deaths caused by disease or any other
common cause of death (old age). A few of the
fairy tales that depict a brutal and strange death
of an evil character are “The Three Little Pigs,”
“The Goose Girl” and “Hansel and Gretel.”
These fairy tales vividly depict the deaths of their
evil or unjust characters. In most cases the
“bad” character, when in the human form,
is a witch, sorceress, or evil step-mother, however
the evil character could also be the simple chamber
maid as in “The Goose Girl.” In “The Three Little
Pigs” the wolf is presented as the evil character,
and he meets his demise as he plummets down the third
pig’s chimney only to be boiled to death and
eaten by the pigs. So is this story trying to
say that if we don’t act mean like the wolf
did, then we will triumph and be able to feast on the spoils
of the deceased? “The Goose Girl” also ends
with a brutal death. This time the unjust character
is presented as a maid who tricked a kingdom into
believing she was the princess. She sentenced
herself when questioned by the king what should be
done to a person who had behaved in her manner (she had
posed as her own mistress, forcing the true princess into
servitude). She was to be dragged naked through the streets
in a barrel studded with nails. This vivid description
shows how death is portrayed as brutal and cruel,
but do the children reading the story recognize this
as final, universal death or just fair punishment?
In “Hansel and Gretel” a witch is burned
alive so the children can escape. This also
presents a question: do young readers focus on the
witch’s death or the children’s escape? In all of these
stories the bad or evil character dies, telling the
child that evil will not triumph in the end.
The child does not see the brutal death as an actual
brutal death, for it is “just a story.”
Moreover, it is the right thing that should have happened.
After all, these characters “deserved” to
die after threatening the lives of the heroes or heroines.
As Bettelheim points out, the children try to pattern
their lives from that of the hero/heroine and not
the other characters (24). In reasoning why
these deaths can be so brutal, the child believes
that since it is for the best or because it is in
his/her imagination, it is alright to wish the death
of this character. Another thing which might provide
an answer to why these deaths are so brutal is that the
child does not dwell on the tale or the death but moves
on to other things.
When fairy tales are being read in classes.
. .the children seem fascinated. But often
they are given no chance to contemplate the tales
or otherwise react; either they are herded immediately
to some other activity, or another story of a
different kind is told to them, which dilutes
or destroys the impression the fairy story had
created. (Bettelheim 59)
In some fairy tales, though not many, the death of
an innocent character or characters is portrayed. The
main example of this can be found in the original version
of “Little Red Riding Hood” where Little Red
Riding Hood and her grandmother were “eaten
by the wicked wolf. . .not saved by a passing woodsman
or hunter before or after they found themselves in
the wolf’s stomach” (Corr 249). This
version of the story is somewhat disappointing, because
what reason was there for the grandmother and child to die?
This story can give an explanation of actual events
in a child’s life. Of course, people do
not usually die by being eaten by wolves, but they
do die for no particular reason and the child can
come to understand this through this story.
The child or adult who reads this story probably prefers
the version where the grandmother and Little Red Riding
Hood are saved in the end, for it gives them both the hope
that a person can overcome death and kill it in the
end. However, when the original version is ignored
the child will miss an important lesson that will
help in the development of perceiving death, they
will not see the finality of death if these characters
are saved, and by their deaths ending the story the
child will walk away somewhat puzzled but will eventually
come to realize that death is not something you can
just step out of as is seen in other fairy tales.
The two best examples of fairy tales where the title
character steps out or awakes from death are “The
Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White.” Both of
these stories have the princess fall into a deep sleep
or death only to be reawakened by a kiss or Snow White’s
prince “who `carries her off’ in her coffin—
which causes her to cough up or spit out the poisonous
apple and come to life” (214). In both
cases a prince was able to rescue the princess from
death and they lived happily ever after. This idea of awakening
the dead can be found throughout fairy tales.
It is a concept which complicates the ideas of irreversibility
and universality, for if one can escape death then
death is not final nor does it kill all living things.
As Bettelheim said “death does not necessarily
signify the end of life. . .Death is rather a symbol
that this person is wished away” (196).
Not only do the fairy tales portray death, but childhood
games also incorporate this concept. “The ‘innocent’
songs and games of childhood through the centuries
have often centered on death themes” (Kastenbaum
276). One of the most interesting examples of
this is the common song and game, “Ring-around-the
Rosie.” This game reached its popularity
during the “peak years of the plague in fourteenth-century
Europe” (Kastenbaum 276). The way in which it
revolved around death is that “rosie”
referred to one of the symptoms of the plague and
“all fall down” to the act of dying.
“The children who enacted this little drama were acutely
aware that people all around them were falling victim to
the plague” (Kastenbaum 276). The symbolic
holding of hands represented the reassurance the child
needed to keep on living. If the children were
joined then a sense of security would envelop them
despite the death and sickness that surrounded them.
In our society today this game does not mean as much
to our children, one normally just sees it as a game, not
as an image that depicts the death and disease of the fourteenth
century.
The tag games also present this idea of centering
around death. These games did not come about to personify
a death but rather the tag games allow the “It”
to become death. In all tag games one person
is designated “It” or death, and he/she
is supposed to try to catch another player who will
then freeze or die. “Even the slightest touch
has grave significance: the victim is instantly transformed
from lively participation to death personified (`It’)”
(Kastenbaum 276).
Although both of these games show death in some light
they also allow for hope to overcome death.
For when one “falls down” in “Ring-around-the-Rosie”
he/she does not stay down but gets up and plays the
game again. Likewise, when one becomes the “death
personified ‘It’” they do not stay this
creature forever but instead force the “It” on another
player and become alive again.
So, both fairy tales and games complicate the issue
of death as reality. Both find ways around the universality
and irreversibility of death, deciding to take approaches
that allow for the reader or participant to experience
death and the resurrection from it. However,
these activities do help children develop death perceptions,
and they are, according to Corr and Bettelheim, “wholesome
experiences” that allow children to interact
with death in “safe and distanced ways”
(Corr 250). Still, this “safe and distanced
way” sometimes avoids the actual concepts of death and
depicts death as something neither final nor world-wide.
Works Cited
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.
Casey, Maria, Helen Orvaschel, and AlfredSellers.
A Scale to Measure the Development of Children’s
Concepts of Death. (from a poster presentation
at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological
Association). Chicago: Nova Southeastern University,
1997.
Corr, Charles, Clyde Nabe, and Donna Corr. Death
and Dying Life and Living. Pacific Grove:
Brooks/Cole, 1994.
Kastenbaum, Robert. Death, Society and Human
Experience. 6th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon,
1998. |
