KHM 004: The Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was

Man, this story turned out to be a little fucked up - and I don't mean in an awesome "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" way.  It tells the tale of a little boy who is apparently so stupid that he doesn't know what it means to be afraid.  His father tries to teach him how to work, but this just ends up with the boy pushing an old man down a flight of stairs.  Because of this, the father kicks him out of his house, and thus, the boy embarks on his journey to discover what it means to be afraid.

The first thing this kid does is set up camp near a gallows. Overnight he feels sad for the hanging bodies because it's cold outside, so he unties their nooses and brings them around his fire to warm up.  They then catch fire and the boy starts yelling at them because they won't move away from the fire (HOW FUCKING STUPID IS THIS DAMN KID?!?!?!).  Eventually he gets so fed up with the bodies that he hangs them back up on the gallows where they'll be cold... okay.

At least the art is cool.

In the next phase of this boys journey, he has to spend three consecutive nights in a haunted castle.  It turns out that if he succeeds, he gets to marry the Kings daughter (of course he does... **sigh**).  Anyway this little endeavor ends with him pulling his dead cousins body out of a casket, putting it in a bed and lying on top of it in bed.  I don't really need to get into any more detail than that.

Through all of this, the boy still has yet to be scared.  The story jumps forward a bit and the boy is now married to the kings daughter.  Eventually, his new wife gets fed up with this man who keeps going on about how he cannot "shudder".  She gets so fed up that she dumps a bucket of water full of little fish on top of his face while he's sleeping.  At this, the boy proclaims that he finally knows what it's like "to shudder".  Seriously.  After the fucked up things that have happened in this story, THIS is what makes the stupid kid feel afraid.  God dammit... You remember that scene in "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie decodes Annies secret message?  That's how I felt when I read this.  It's just so empty and devoid of anything meaningful or interesting.  What it comes down to is that this story is essentially a journal entry detailing the original author's necrophilia-filled fantasies featuring his/her dead cousin.

KHM 003: Our Lady's Child

"Our Lady's Child" is essentially just a lame bible parable.  It tells the story of a woodcutters daughter, who is taken by the Virgin Mary to live in heaven because her family is so poor.  Here, she is given a key to the 13 doors of heaven, but is given instructions not to open the 13th door.  Of course, she can't resist the 'forbidden knowledge' and opens the door.  When Mary asks her if she had opened the door, the girl lies 3 times and is sent back to Earth (as a mute, no less) and lives many years in a forest.

Eventually, a King finds her and decides to marry her.  They have three children, and each time she gives birth, Mary comes down to earth to ask once again, whether she had opened the 13th door [her voice is temporarily restored so she can answer].  She continually lies, and each time, Mary takes her daughter away from her and the King.  After the third time, the people decide that she is a maneater and that she should be burned at the stake.  At the very last moment before she burns to death, she yells to the sky that she did indeed open the door.  Suddenly, it begins to rain and Mary comes down to earth with the three daughters and claims that if you acknowledge your sins, you'll be forgiven.

So this is pretty much just a bullshit bible story, and I'm hoping that there aren't going to be too many of these.  The main character is really, really dumb.  It was quite obvious that she was caught, and she kept lying.  Furthermore, on three separate occasions she lied about it again, and had her daughter taken away from her each time.  I mean, that couldn't have been surprising to her.  I can even accept this happening once, but three times?  I can just imagine the conversation:

Mary:  If you admit to it, I'll give you your daughter back, and you'll have your voice back.
Stupid nameless girl: I didn't do it
Mary:  Really???
Stupid nameless girl:  I didn't do it
Mary:  Well, okay then..... you know I'm going to be taking your new daughter... right?
Stupid nameless girl: ..... I didn't do it

You get the point.  Anyway, the next story is called "The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was".  Well fuck...  That's heavy.  I think I can reasonably guess that it will be better than this one.

KHM 002: Cat and Mouse in Partnership

"Cat and Mouse in Partnership" is an interesting little story acting as a metaphor for the original author views of people/society as a whole.  In the story, there are two characters (a cat and a mouse, of course), who live together and decided to stock up on food for the coming winter.  Obviously, they decide to go with a pot of fat.  The problem is that they have no place to store this fat, so clearly, the best place for them to store it is under the altar at the church ("for no one dares take anything away from there").  Over the course of the story, the greedy cat decides on three separate occasions to make an excuse to leave the house and snack on the fat herself.  Eventually, all that remains is an empty pot.

Jump forward to winter.  They are now low on food and the mouse decides that it's time to retrieve the pot of fat.  They go up to the church, and the mouse finally clues in to what's going on - but before she can do anything about it, she is promptly eaten by the cat.  "And this is the way of the world", closes story.

I thought that the story was quite interesting.  It cautions that people are greedy, that you shouldn't be too trusting of them, and that in certain situations it's better to remain quiet than to call somebody out.  While I don't completely agree with this, it is definitely true in some cases.  Overall, I liked it better than "The Frog King, or Iron Henry."

KHM 001: The Frog King, or Iron Henry

I didn't realize until about half way in, but this is essentially the story of what I knew to be "The Frog Prince". You know the story: a princess has to kiss a frog and the frog turns into a prince and they fall in love.  The main difference between the version I knew and this version is that instead of kissing the frog, the princess picks up the frog and smashes it against a wall - for whatever reason, this causes the frog turns into the prince.

Anyway, the story starts out with the princess playing with her favourite ball by a pond.  The ball falls into the  pond so the princess starts crying.  The frog sees this, and being the nice frog that he is, tells the princess that he can get the ball if she promises to let him follow her around, eat off her plate, and sleep in her bed.  The princess agrees, gets her ball back, and then runs off like a princess.

Later in the evening, the princess is eating supper with her father (the king) and the frog has finally tracked her down.  He begs and pleads with the princess that she keep her promises.  The king finds out what happened and, like a good father, tells the princess that she should keep her promises.  So the princess does this until she and the frog are in her bedroom (and out of her father's sight), when at this point she breaks her promise and makes the frog sleep in the corner.  When the frog asks again to sleep in the bed, she picks up the frog and throws it against the wall.  The frog then turns into a prince, they leave the castle together the next day, and live happily ever after.  The ending didn't really make a whole lot of sense.  There was also a part that I didn't really care for where one of the prince's servants, named 'Faithful Henry', was in love with the prince.

Overall, I think that the story would have been better if she decided to let the frog sleep in her bed.  If this was the act that caused the frog to turn into the prince, it would reinforce the idea that by keeping your promises, good things will happen to you.  Of course, perhaps the point is that people don't need to be completely honest all the time.

Moral of the story:  Keep 2/3 of your promises and you will be kidnapped by strange frog-men.

Introduction

So I recently ordered "Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales" from Amazon for $22 or so. It turned out to be a very nice leather-bound copy:

The pages have a gold-trim, the artwork is pretty cool, and it even has one of those fabric bookmark thingys.  It would have been nice if each story had a little illustration or something, but considering what I paid I'm pretty pleased with my purchase.  I think I'll feel quite fancy reading this whilst sipping tea (Earl grey, hot [probably just green tea, actually]).

A little background information - I've actually never blogged before, nor have I ever read any of these stories.  Of course, I'm familiar with modern interpretations of Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, etc - but for the most part, I'm going in completely fresh.  I'm expecting the stories to be dated and a little twisted...  it should be interesting.

The plan is to read all 210 stories, and after I finish each, to come here and record my thoughts/impressions. Hopefully this won't suck and will actually be interesting/entertaining.  I'm a CS major who's into sci-fi & fantasy, so there'll probably nerdy references sprinkled throughout.  There isn't really going to be a structure for these posts - I'm basically going to give short summarys of the stories and rant a bit.

...

Obligatory Batman reference to start us off

And here. We. Go.