In a traditional fairy tales, the ogre, giant, or monster is pure evil, and portrays a satanic image. They eat humans and commit evil and heinous crimes. The prince on the other hand is to angelic proportions, thus rescuing the princess and vanquishing the evil being.
At the start of the film “Shrek” a book is opened, revealing classically written text, and carefully drawn, jeweled pictures. Classical music commences to play, and a deep-voiced, stereotypical male voice narrative starts. This brings up an expectation of a traditional fairy tale. But straight away, once the viewer is starting to get drawn into the story, Shrek shuts the book, and the classical scene is abruptly destroyed. Shrek then exclaims, “Yeah, like that’ll ever happen!” tears out the page that he was reading, uses it to cleanse himself after relieving himself, and flushes the toilet. At this point a peppy tune starts to play, and Shrek's morning activities.
Many examples of Shrek’s kindness and lack of “ogre-ness” are shown throughout the film. An example of this is as follows.
Donkey arrives, and Shrek tries to frighten Donkey away by roaring at him. But donkey merely compliments him on his ability to terrify people. Donkey laughs at Shrek because Donkey only manages to see a good side to Shrek. Soon, Shrek heads towards his house, with Donkey following him uninvited. Even though donkey follows him all the way home, Shrek doesn’t let him sleep inside, but makes him stay outside his house.
Shrek continues to show a good side in himself, but tries to suppress it whenever it shows.
