Once Upon A Time......

           When growing up, my parents always wanted me to dream big. They would shield my sister and I from harsh truths of the world and attempt to fill my head with the happiest thoughts possible. Through their own personal experiences as well as implementing books and television shows, they did their best to provide me with exciting stories that would keep my outlook on life the utmost positive. One mechanism that helped them entertain me and keep my spirits high was fairy tales. Simply put, according to Merriam-Webster, a fairy tale is a story involving fantastic forces and beings. They often involve a character using a magical element to work with their environment in order to maintain happiness and peace.

To fully understand what a fairy tale is, it is important to understand its rhetoric features. The purpose of a fairy tale is entertainment. Authors of fairy tales have do not often have any intention of conveying any information through the writing and are not using them to teach any lessons. While sometimes these tales do portray an idea of good versus evil or practicing moral behavior, authors do not often have the intention of providing much more than entertainment from their writing. One of the most important features of fairy tales is the understanding of its intended audience. Fairy tales are most often intended for young children, this being that the stories are never truly based on reality and in order to fully enjoy them, one must not try to understand its content literally. Young children, without much life experience, have a different grasp on reality than those who are older and wiser and because of their viewpoint; they are the best audience for this type of literature. Understanding the context of fairy tales is also extremely necessary to fully grasp them. Fairy tales began as story telling as an oral tradition that was passed down and later became a textual genre that we see today. Once a story was created, people would re-tell the story and pass it on for others to hear. An interesting perspective on the beginnings of fairy tales is that some of the magical elements and themes that are used in the stories may have been somewhat applicable to the time period in which it was created and as the story got passed on became more unbelievable to the audience. The style and tone of fairy tales are also important to the understanding of the genre. Since fairy tales began traditionally with oral story telling, the tone can be described as informal and the style is informative. 

Many tales have been told over time that have been passed down through generations, but fairy tales have unique elements that make them unlike any other genre. A very distinctive feature of a fairy tale is the special beginning and ending words. Most people are familiar with “once upon a time” and it is phrases such as this that bring you into a world outside of reality that set the stage for a unique fairy tale experience. This is the most important feature that defines a story as a fairy tale. Other elements that are included in most all fairy tales are the use of a good and bad character to talk about some universal truth. Whether it is a coming of age story or a focus on hope for love or success, fairy tales most always incorporate the use of a protagonist and an antagonist to portray a truth of the world and in order to figure out this truth, they use magical elements to help them. In addition to these conventions, fairy tales often include patterns. Any recurring numbers or patterns, usually in threes, sixes or sevens, often play a role in the story line.

I found it extremely interesting analyzing what makes a fairy tale unique to its own genre. While there are several types of fairy tales, such as fables and parables, I found that the defining element of the genre is the special beginning and/or ending words. The story in between that beginning of ending has infinite possibilities that could keep it in the category of a fairy tale and I think that is extremely unique for a genre. To be true to the genre, after a long first PB assignment for the writing 2 class, they all lived happily ever after.