On Returning and Indexing...

Oh, I give up! Weeks I spend, wrestling with this fascinating, nascent concept offered by Hansel and Gretel—because it’s been hovering over my head for a good two months—and it won’t come. The $*&# thing refuses to be written. I have notes I’ll come back to, but I’ve had more than enough of that.

We’ll resume regularly scheduled fairy tales next week. Before we go further, I’d like to cover the Aarne-Thompson system with you a little. It’s a helpful tool, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be confusing.

Of all the folk tales in all the world, some of them are very similar. Some have nothing in common, but the whole point of labeling something a “fairy tale” (see the Genres page for additional context) is that it connects to the human soul. A fairy tale (or folk tale) contains clues about the values and character traits of a culture. Not necessarily religious beliefs—as some fairy tales incorporate culturally “lost” elements, such as fairy godmothers or devils who still live with their mothers. (Yes, really. One of my favorites. Coming soon...)

People will often complain that “all fairy tales are alike.” It’s where we get phrases like “fairy-tale endings” and “happily ever after.” But these stories aren’t all the same. We’ve seen stories about very young people, and very old people. Characters who change and characters who don’t. Or won’t. And while Red Riding Hood has very little in common with Cinderella, but readers all know a “damsel in distress” when they come across one in stories.

These things in common are called “motifs”—meaning patterns. In folk tales, motifs are events or actions by a particular character that make a recognizable design. All of the parts of a fairy tale don’t have to be the same, but when certain scripts show up, labels are easy to apply.

Cinderella is an unbelievably popular tale, but Snow White is a more interesting example here. A couple variations are stashed in the Summaries page. In both the German Snow White and the Scottish Silver-Tree, there is a “mother figure” out to kill our heroine, an escape to a place where the princess is loved, a glass box in which the “dead girl” is hidden, and a miraculous recovery facilitated by a third-party woman. Oh, and a prince whose love for our girl knows neither time nor reason. There are even a couple Italian versions I have not included, all with the same motifs. (The two Italian versions, one is very complicated and the other is very distressing. The latter also has certain motifs in common with “The Goose Girl.”)

Antti Aarne, and later Stith Thompson, developed this index which tracks the patterns of a story. Their studies focused primarily on Northern European and Western Asian stories, but not exclusively. In recent years, a scholar named Hans-Jörg Uther has adapted the indexing system so it can be expanded to include new material, but this has not taken universal hold.

The Aarne-Thompson classification system is designed a little like the Dewey Decimal System in American libraries. Big categories are grouped by the hundreds, then more detailed motifs are subdivided in each category until each story has its own unique number. The Persecuted Heroine, for example, is labeled “510A”—this story is also known as the Cinderella archetype. Supernatural helpers, like fairy godmothers or magic sticks (from “Katie Wooden-cloak”), are the 500 category, and a girl who needs supernatural help is the 10 of 510. “A” and “B” are further subdivisions—510B is a category of stories where good girls are escaping from abnormal circumstances. Animals stories have their own category. So do ogres.

Like any indexing system, it’s not perfect. But it’s still a very useful tool when exploring how to study or think about a fairy tale.

What are some “modern fairy tales” that have motifs from older fairy tales? Can you think of recent stories where the pattern of a particular fairy tale was disrupted to make the story different? How effective were the changes?

Snow White and the Deus Ex Machina

Where last we left our heroine, she lay dead in a glass coffin. How could she be saved?

The contemporary version we’re using introduces a Prince Charming to kiss her back to life—a literary device called a “deus ex machina.”

The deus ex machina can trace its origins back to Greek playwrights. In ancient Greek theatre, actors playing gods or goddesses would be lifted onto the stage using a crane. Hence, the literal term “god from the machine.” There are still records of both Greek and Roman writers objecting to the concept.

Not because the playwright had employed a machine. The reason behind the machine was the problem. The characters in Greek stories (both plays and mythologies) would sometimes heap so much trouble on their own heads that they could not save themselves. The gods would have to intervene on a character’s behalf. (This intervention was often the reason for writing the play. Every year in ancient Athens, playwrights entered a competition by submitting three related plays, all dealing with one problem and its solution. The gods would sometimes hand-deliver the solution to the troubled characters to show the righteousness of a particular answer.) Of course, sometimes a writer just gets stuck.

Most writers—not to mention that most fearsome subset of critics, our readers—object to any use of a deus ex machina when telling a story. And why not? Introducing a new twist to the story is one thing. Cheating is another. Your fans don’t want you to cheat.

This doesn’t mean your characters don’t need to be saved sometimes. Or that introducing a new character (or any sort of device) is inappropriate. Both are very valid, when used wisely. The question is: how do you bring in a rescuer?

One modern retelling of Snow White is a surprisingly sweet movie called Just Like Heaven. When the Prince Charming archetype first meets the Snow White character, she’s already in the glass coffin. Metaphorically. (She appears as a spirit, haunting her old apartment that he’s currently renting.) After he takes a little while to “wake up” himself, he sets out upon a quest to find and save her. She cannot wake herself up, so she needs him to help her. It’s a neat twist on the Snow White story, told more from the Prince’s perspective than Snow White’s.

Of course, a writer has plenty of other ways to solve a cornered-character dilemma. Renew an old friendship. Plant a beanstalk. Drop a house on a witch. Hire a yodeling woodsman. Oh, wait--that's another story...

What about your story? What does your Snow White need to be saved from? Can she do it herself, or does she need help? Will her help come from someone she already knows, or someone who comes to her aid after she’s stuck?

Snow White and ...

I love a good fairy tale. Always an adventure. Too short to ever include dull moments. As a writer, I can always come back to fairy tales to explore story-telling elements. Characters. Plot development. Foreshadowing. Rhythm and pacing. Imagine my delight upon discovering that not one, but two new tv series were coming out—both based on fairy tales. Of course, how those fairy tales are interpreted in the real world is a little different...

Still, plenty can be celebrated in the retelling of an old story. The reader (or, in television’s case, the viewer) is given so much opportunity to take apart and put together the organic puzzle that is a good story. Where does the story start? How will it end? Where are you, the storyteller, taking me? What can I expect, and will I follow along when you do the unexpected?

When I originally contemplated how I would start this, ABC’s Once Upon a Time provided the perfect opening. Fairy tale characters, trapped in the very unmagical modern world. A curse that can only be broken by someone who must relearn wonderful things like hope and love. And, come on. Who doesn’t love Snow White?

Well, I don’t.

Or, I didn’t. As a study in human relationships, Snow White is fine for dysfunctional mother-daughter character study. But as a romance...? Do girls really want their Prince Charmings to go around kissing corpses? Am I that out of touch?

Much to my delight, research reveals that I am wrong about the story. The “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” we know today—based loosely on the Disney film—isn’t exactly the version that was passed around for hundreds of years. (Click here to see why.) For our purposes, the current understanding of the story will work well. Not so much because I want to complain about a beloved story, but because it leads so nicely into the classic literary device that writers are encouraged to avoid:

                The dreaded Deus Ex Machina.

Snow White, through no fault of her own (well, perhaps a little blame can be laid at her door), is poisoned and left for dead. What to do? How can the writer save her? Enter the Prince. He can revive her, treasure her, and whisk her away to a happily-ever-after life. Very handy trick, pulling a savior out of thin air.

Now, any writer can get stuck. Your friendless character is trapped at the bottom of a mine shaft/about to shoot the presidential nominee/inside seven glass coffins—what else are you going to do, but introduce a new character? The path of a story often paints itself into a corner. Sometimes, because of the character. Sometimes, because of the writer. Next time, I’ll talk more about where “deus ex machina” comes from and some solutions to avoiding it.

How would you solve Snow White’s heavy-eyed dilemma? Come back later in the week for more...