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Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work By Valerie Gribben

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Recommended: Moral and culture in fairy tales

Fairy tales are stories that try to teach readers morals and standards that society has chosen as to what makes a person good. In “Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work”, Valerie Gribben believes fairy tales can connect to reality, make difficult times easier, and they can guide people to do the right thing. Fairy tales can help guide people through life both directly and indirectly, they instruct people on how to behave and react to certain situations. Through fairy tales we learn how kindness, morals, helpfulness, and so on. Fairy tales can portray human nature, but often times it’s presented in an exaggerated way; the poor man wants a house, then a castle, then to be a god or the man who seeks out the most beautiful princess in the most …show more content…

Gribben even mentions that fairy tales especially teach people on how to be kind. Certain fairy tales try to teach lessons more than others, in “Beauty and the Beast” the main lesson taught throughout the story is to not judge people based on appearance. There’s also the underlying lesson that girls don’t have to focus on getting married, they can seek out knowledge instead; boys are taught in the story that they don’t have to overly masculine in order to be seen in a positive light by others. In Cinderella, however, the main lesson is to always be kind with the underlying lesson they girls should want to be pretty and find a husband. I remember my mom always talking about her favorite Disney movie was “The Little Mermaid” and I can see that in the type of person my mother is; my mom is the type of person who would willingly sacrifice something for a person she loved the same way Ariel had to sacrifice her voice to walk on land. The way fairy tales teach us lessons isn’t directly, they tell a story of a person and if that person has desirable traits they have a happy ending, but if they have undesirable traits they often end up failing or, in the worst case, they end up

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In the essay “Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm work” written by Valerie Gribben, as a starting medical resident, she correlates her experiences to the Grimm Brothers fairy tales. Gribben's during her undergrad, studying Victorian tales and never thought that those stories would ever be relatable to real-life situations; however, during Gribben’s first day in residency, that idea changed. “The Grimm fairy tales once seemed as if they had taken place in lands far, far away, but I see them now in my everyday hospital rotations,” emphasizing that those fairy tales that seemed once as impossible to occur are occurring throughout her rotations. Gribben finds it comforting that she can connect her rotation patients to the Grimm tales and not shaken

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Spitz quotes directly from another author, Marina Warner, stating how fairy tales are “ stories that try to find the truth and give us glimpses of greater things…this is the principle that underlies their growing presence… “ (Paragraph 2). In Cinderella, the Grimms’ specifically use fairy tale conventions to give audiences the ‘glimpses of greater things’. Every single convention was utilized to draw back to the idea that one must disregard the frivolous forces of life and live their most sincere self, essentially allowing for audiences to use Cinderella’s story as a baseline of comparison towards their own lives. Spitz continues to remark that “An educated adult will listen with a gnawing deep-down feeling that the story merits attention and bears a species of uncanny truth” (Paragraph 8). If an educated adult were to read an article that stated their lifestyles were outright incorrect and they must disregard vanity and act more genuine, they would feel shocked and feel less inclined to listen.

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From its onset with its first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Disney has grown to become a worldwide phenomenon today. But over the years, various parent groups, scholars and film critics have accused Disney for creating shallow, stereotypical princesses whose ultimate aim was to find her 'prince charming ' and live happily ever after. In her article, “What’s Wrong With Cinderella?” in the New York Times, Peggy Orenstein expresses her concern over the effect of princess figures like Cinderella on young girls ' perceptions of themselves and how they should behave (“What’s Wrong With Cinderella?”).

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These stories are for entertainment. In Hawaii these stories are told to let the children be entertained. That goes for all fairy tales they are made up stories not to teach a lesson. Normally these fairy tales don’t have values, but let allow the children to be entertained.

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Many families have many traditions, but one tradition that is common among all households is that they read fairy tales to their children right before they put them to sleep. They do this to fill their minds with good positive thoughts and leave them with something to think about. Religion dictates the characteristics of familiar fairy tales as religion provides a moral and ethical framework for having a good life, an ideal goal parents want their children to have. On the whole, fairy tales are constantly changed to adhere to cultural or social beliefs that are deemed important by diverse people in a community.

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Childhood stories come from everywhere and date back many years. Most fairy tales are stories that rely on magic or having a belief in something to develop a story or lesson. In the book “Grimm” we discover that some of the stories do not always have a “live happily ever after” ending. The stories were made to teach kids the negative effects of some actions and to keep them from getting hurt. The authors of Grimm fairy tales made the stories filled with blood and horror.

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Justyna Deszcz wrote an article based on Zipes’ political and socio-historical approach and added a variety of facts she had collected from many other authors and articles. Deszcz believes that the reason we have shifted into the submissive and “family-friendly” theme of fairy tales is because “the fairytale has been reduced to a mass-produced commodity, to be purchased and owned, and to bring in considerable profit. What is more, the fairytale is being used as a source and a vehicle of powerful self-mirroring images affirming the existing value system, and thus lulling audiences into passivity and compliance.” This point proves that the original thought of harsh realities needing to be exposed in story telling has converted to just being a profitable way to tell simple-minded children’s

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All Cinderella wanted was to go to the ball and see the Prince only to be taught the lesson that everyone isn’t always what they seem. I believe this moral of the story is quite common in movies and fairytales, as you can see, and I’ve noticed it’s always having to be told. I believe this lesson is something a lot of us are taught or at least seen in movies, etc., and it’s almost an easy lesson to understand and enforce in your own life. However, I feel as though the reason this story is being told so often is because even though we may know and learn the lesson, we still get caught up in our day to day lives and end up slipping and making those mistakes.

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Cinderella is also portrayed as a young woman suffering silently, without taking any action and waiting for her Prince Charming to rescue her from her horrible life. This is as much a fairy tale convention as it is a gender expectation for women to be beautiful and silent. However, this wasn’t as much as a gender expectation in the 1800s as it is today. Cinderella’s father does not appear to be home as much as the stepmother, and this illustrates the type of work and expectations for women’s and men’s jobs in the 1800s. The father is probably commuting to work, and this is evident through the fact that he never sees the cruelty experienced by Cinderella.

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Always Expect More Fairy tales and parables are more puissant than any other speech or book, because of their impressive impact on people all over the globe. Not only do they teach many lessons, but they are also very entertaining. For instance, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is a very famous folk tale about an Emperor who gets tricked into purchasing an invisible outfit because of his selfishness and pride. The Emperor also goes out in public “wearing” that outfit and, in result, embarrassed himself in front of his whole kingdom. To most people, this may seem like a worthless, little story; however, that is because most people nowadays never seem to look for more treasure or dig any deeper than what is on the surface.

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Most of Carter’s stories are not new tales, but retellings of old ones, and underline the fact that stories are a part of the human civilization and have always been there. However, in the general acceptance of stories as part of culture what has been overlooked is the fact that the stories shape culture and human behaviour. Stories encode moral norms and gender stereotypes and propagate them in society. Fairy-tales, in particular, portray stereotypical modes of behaviour for men and women, boys and girls and subtly urge them to internalize and thus perform this kind of stereotypical behaviour. Through her stories Carter draws attention to the passive acceptance of the social and moral codes by the readers and the need for all individuals to think anew and re-examine those blind spots in the tales and uncover what has been covered up.

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They are not just for children but can help in the lives of adults as well. The fairy tales that we hear today were not written for children in the first place, it was after the late nineteenth century that the tales were changed and made ‘more appropriate’ for children. In case of children’s fairytales in simple terms – they show children how to solve problems, they cross cultural boundaries and at the same time familiarize children with their own traditions and cultures, they develop a child’s imagination and last not the least they teach lessons (moral lessons, life lessons etc.). Thus I think fairytales are an important part of the learning process especially for children, while for adults it can be a source of entertainment or

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But the underlying problem that most people haven’t realized as they continue to enjoy those gems is if it really promotes an adequate portrayal in perceiving reality. What we’re trying to get at here is, if it is the kind of story that would provide realism and angle and not just to believe in the powers of the supernatural made-up world, or to rely in the epic one-sided battle of the righteous and immoral beings in a story. What’s more important to look for is if it provides a true perspective in reality where nothing could harm the child’s psyche and inquisitive nature as presented through the hidden agendas lying in between the lines of reading fairy tales. However, we’re not necessarily saying that the people who continue to read or watch fairy tales have an unfair disadvantage over the matter. It’s just that, if people don’t open their eyes and put a different viewpoint towards it, they would still continue to thrive with their minimalistic view of living life by just following the usual norms in society that’s full of do’s and don’ts and other restrictions.

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