Berkay Antmen
Ms. Johnson
September 28th, 2012
English and Literature
Tribute to Well Known Fairy Tales and Realization Of The Changes We Had Been Through Over Past Centuries
The short story named “The Princesses’ Forum” is a mixture of old fairy tales in a modernized way. The short story is not similar to any classic fairy tale. The text is shaped by the cultural values, personal opinions and has some other content which is unique to our present time. With all these properties this makes our short story no longer a fairy tale with a value of being a classic story worldwide. If this text had been written in a different time or place with a language for a different audience it would be completely different based on the culture of the community at that times and there is a good chance for it to be an another common fairy tale if it was written in the times of when other well-known fairy tales had been written.
The difference between an ordinary short story and a classical fairy tale is how the fairy tale will tell about some simple morals to the reader in the most basic way. Also a fairy tale will remain same in all years because it is written in such a way it does not contain specific properties of its time, which will help it to be still known after hundreds of years. The thing is “The Princesses’ Forum” does not seem to have such a claim to be a classic fairy tale. It is more likely to be using fairy tale characters to take the reader’s attention easily. Also unlike the original fairy tales Princesses’ Forum does have some parts in which the reader has to have some background knowledge about the topic to be able to understand the purpose of the text. The author is most like a North American and he/she assumes that the audience knows about the background information on the chosen characters in the story. Something similar is seen in how Rapunzel responds to being pregnant: “That’s because I’ve been taking the pill.” If the author were not a North American resident this part could have been shaped differently. This is one of the few examples on how the language is shaped by the culture of the author. As a result a reader with no background knowledge of birth control pills would not understand what Rapunzel means with “taking the pill”.
