A Grimm Challenge: Loyalty

I am at work right now and I left my nook and home, so I can’t remember the specific ones that I read but I’ll give you a review of what I can remember. I remember reading one about Faithful John, who gave his everything to protect his king and was rewarded with being turned to stone from a curse. The King realized he screwed up and agreed to sacrifice his kids to bring John back. It worked and the kids ended up not dying either.

As I read these, I try and figure out what lesson they were trying to teach kids. What is the message? I’m guessing that this one was a story of loyalty. Loyalty will be rewarded no matter how long you have to wait. A decent message.

Another loyalty was one where a girl accidentally turned her 9 brothers into crows. If she didn’t talk or laugh for 7 years, they would be restored. She got married and her evil mother in law painted her out to be some sort of freak to her husband and convinced him to kill her. Just when she was about to die, the 7 years were up and a happily ever after was achieved. Alright, family (*cough* loyalty) is important.

The Man Who Could Not Shiver (or something to that extent) was kind of creepy. He spent his whole life trying to learn how to shiver. He kept offering people money to teach him how and all these creepy things kept happening to him. But he just didn’t understand and thus was not scared. As for me, the idea of a burning corpse hanging from a rope on a tree is burning into my brain.

I can’t remember for sure how it ended, but I think it was love that made him learn how to shiver, which, if true, provokes a rolled-eyed reaction.

There is one more that I can vaguely remember. It was about old animals leaving their lives where they were about to be killed or replaced. They wanted to start a band, and ended up in a house living out their life in happy peace. What I get upon great reflection is be kind to your elders. Or that singing animals are awesome. Not sure which.

So far I’ve been disappointed in the creepiness of Grimm’s tales. I've heard that they are the creepy to define all creepy tales. They are similar to any Greek myths (like the one where the live children are in the wolves belly alive and whole and they cut it open and replace it with rocks), but where are the kids who dance until their feet bleed? Maybe coming up… I still have 500 more pages to go.