Friday, April 23, 2010

Fairy Tale Fridays: The Butterfly

Special Thanks to my Personal Faery Friend for the Button Art: Ye Olde Faery Shoppe

I decided to randomly choose this week's selection to help in expanding our exposure to Andersen's tales.  I looked at this short tale and knew it was one that I had not read or even heard of.  One of my purposes behind doing this weekly event was to explore a variety of fairy tales . . . ones that we are familiar with and ones that we are not . . . ones that make us smile, ones that might even make us cringe, and ones that just make us wonder!  This week's selection, The Butterfly left me in the last category.

Here's my brief synopsis of this short tale . . . The butterfly wants to marry and the lucky recipient of his proposal will be a flower.  Unfortunately, there are just too many flowers to choose from!  He asks for help from the camomile.  He offends her and then moves onto the daunting task of finding his mate . . . snowdrops have no personality, linden blossoms were small and came from a large family, sweet peas did not age well . . . and this continues until he just gets too old and simply never gets married.

The Butterfly is really a very sad tale.  I'm not really sure what the moral is even supposed to be.  My first thought is . . . Don't be picky in your mate.  Then, I got to thinking maybe . . . Don't interact with the big guys that are just so different from us.  I really could not come up with a great moral that I liked, but I did come up with one specific quote that I do want to take away . . .
"But to live is not enough.  One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."
How do I interpret this?  I like to think that it means that we must not just go through the motions in life.  We can live day to day, week to week, getting stuck in the rut . . . BUT, we must take time to soak in the sunshine, realize the good things in our life, and simply stop to smell the roses!  There is so much that we can miss in life, little things we don't really appreciate . . . until they are no longer there or available to us.

How will you choose to live?  What is one of those small things you appreciate that others tend to overlook?  And, of course, what did you take away from this tale?  Was it something completely different?


UPCOMING TALES:

Friday, April 30th:  One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three Eyes by Brothers Grimm

Friday, May 7th:  The Three Bears by Robert Southey
Friday, May 14th:  The Three Billy Goats Gruff (Traditional Tale)
Friday, May 21st:  The Philosopher's Stone by Hans Christian Andersen



9 comments:

  1. I had a busy day at a reading conference but if I had posted I would have talked about reading The 3 Little Pigs and how my 2nd grade stars acted it out, in a very dramatic manner!!

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  2. Peaceful Reader . . . When you get that written, I want to read about it!!! I can just imagine the huffing and puffing!! :)

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  3. This was a new one for me to. You know, I think I like the Grimm tales better than Andersen's in general.

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  4. I agree with you, Carol, reading Grimm you are reading an entire societies take on a subject and so you can forgive the group, or the time, or the masses for the wrong conclusions. Andersen's stories are just from him and it becomes much more personal. I hate to say it but after reading just two of his stories I'm starting to not like the guy very much.

    I am enjoying the variety though, and getting to read stories I've never heard of before! That turned out to be more fun than expected. Kudos, Tif!

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  5. I'm enjoying your fairy tale Fridays, as I teach about fairy tales to college students. I'm going to do a post about your fairy tale Fridays on Diamondsandtoads.com

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  6. carolsnotebook . . . As I read more and more of them, I think I tend to agree with you!

    bitsy . . . I've glad you are having fun! I'm going to try to keep adding some of the not-so-popular tales as we go. I like having a new and fresh one, but we can always fall back on some of the ol' favorites too!

    KateW . . . I'm so glad you are enjoying them! I would be very curious about your thoughts on many of them and what you chat about with your students!! When you get a chance, please share!! :)

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  7. The Butterfly sounds really interesting, Tif! I am going to read the Brothers Grimm tale for next week. It's one I haven't heard of!

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  8. Thanks for visiting my blog and talking about commenting, Tif! It looks like there isn't really one preferred standard, which is a relief :-)

    This fairy tale IS depressing. Geez. My parents talk to me like I'm going end up like that butterfly :-P

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  9. Rebecca . . . Thanks for participating this last week!!! But, I'm curious . . . do you think you will participate some more after this last week's selection?!?! :)

    Aarti . . . Thank you for stopping by!!! And, I'm sure you won't end up like the butterfly!! Parents will just be parents!!! :)

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