The Position Of Dogs In Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales

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Introduction Today, it is popularly supposed that there are 10 million dogs in Japan. Dogs have a close relationship with people in our time because there are pet dogs, guide dogs and police dogs.
There are dogs which are abandoned, have spells cast on them or are used in negative comparisons in the Grimm Brothers’ Fairy Tales. Why do dogs appear as these bad images in contrast to the present age?
I will draw up a table which classifies the dogs of Grimm Brothers’ Fairy Tales for the purpose of the dog’s appearance, their feature and people who appear with dogs and analyze it in this dissertation. Then, I will disclose the position of dogs in Grimm Brothers’ Fairy Tales. In addition, I will examine them and whether they reflect a reality …show more content…

However, dogs are the first animals that human raised and called the best friend of human. Then, why are dogs disliked in the Bible? The reason is deeply related to Christianity. That is because in the biography of a Christian saint, it was said that animals are the incarnation of evil. The other reason is that dogs are thought of as spirits of witches. In myths, dogs have always had aggressive characters for a long while. The most famous dog in a myth is a Kerberos which has three heads and tail of a snake. His role as that of a guardian deity to Hades which has a brutal character dates back to a custom of dogs of chowing down on a dead person’s flesh. Dogs which chow down on the dead’s flesh are supported as they are thought to be able to produce a new body. The dog guides the soul of a dead person to the other world. The dog is a guardian of Hades. On the other hand, it is a symbol of a person who becomes …show more content…

A common point of KHM33 “Three Words”, KHM50 “Sleeping Beauty” and KHM96 “The Three Little Birds” is that dogs are victims which have had spells cast on them. Why did they become victims in spite of being spirits of a witch? The spirits cast a spell on a person and animals to kill them or make them ill. Because of this, I consider that dogs were made use of to achieve a goal of a witch who cast a spell on them. On the other hand, a witch names her spirits as a pet and often takes care of them. We can guess that the dogs in the three stories are animals which are suited to have had spells cast on instead of spirits of a