Why Fairytale Characters Must Go Through Hardships In Their Expedition Because Obstacles Changes A Person’s Viewpoint In Life (Essay Sample)

Fairytales and their moral significance
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Institution
Why Fairytale Characters Must Go Through Hardships In Their Expedition Because Obstacles Changes A Person’s Viewpoint In Life.
Introduction
Truth be told, every individual on the face of the earth has one challenge or another, one addiction or the other, one disorder or another, one fear or another. This means that everybody faces a period that they feel worthless, meaningless, discouraged, tired and confused about who they are and what they are supposed to be doing about their life. Every individual struggle to get things right and every person depend on another to lift them up during these trying moments. This is the essence of fairy tales; they depict the real life struggles to their viewers and cause them to have a sense/string of hope that all would be okay someday, that they would also have a happy ending ("5 Surprisingly Valuable Lessons We Can Learn From Fairytales | Soul and Spirit", 2017).
Impact of fairytales
These fairy tales are mostly watched by children, and some are read in schools for them. They cause them to have an insight about what struggles they have and eventually make them realize really who they are. These tales make them identify with a particular class of people and causes them to engage their souls. They pump in strength to them and make them feel like someone got their back.
There is a common trend that all fairytales have, and that is; they usually have their characters go through the worst moments of their lives to the extent that they feel like giving up, and at that point, they are rejuvenated by a number of factors that help them overcome the obstacles they face ("5 Surprisingly Valuable Lessons We Can Learn From Fairytales | Soul and Spirit", 2017). These factors include having that one friend who will always encourage them or be having a mentor who would challenge them verbally or non-verbally or have a pet that will challenge them to do a little more that they imagined they could do (stretching their limits.)
Examples of fairytales that have helped many through various situations
All these tales tell their audience that for every Cinderella, Snow White, or Sofia (in Sofia the first), there is a problem they have to overcome in order to end up with the happy moments (the goals they always want to achieve). There is always that one wicked aunt, or a wicked friend, or a wicked step-mum or step-dad that would frustrate their endeavors in life. There are also adventurous Fairytales such as “Mollie Whuppie and the Giant.” That tells its audience the importance of staying courageous even in the worst situations on earth (Alison, 2017). Mollie Whuppie is a heroine who helped to save her sisters from the horrors of the wicked giant that had frustrated many travelers that went to the vicinity of its dwelling place.
Mollie, together with her sisters got lost in a forest and in one way or the other, they find their way to the giant’s house, so the giant plans on killing all of them and Mollie takes up the task of protecting all her sisters and ensuring that they escape from the giant’s house. It was always said that no one ever really escaped from that house alive (Alison, 2017). Molly is depicted by the author (Robin Muller) as the youngest of all the sisters and yet the strongest, the most courageous and daring of them all. They eventually make their way out and they find themselves in a King’s Castle. The King then dares her to always go back to the giant’s house and bring to him the things that the giant has ever stolen and as a result, her sisters would be married to someone who is in the King’s court (Alison, 2017). She does that and eventually recovers what the giant had stolen and all her sisters get married. She also finds favor in the eyes of the King and she marries the prince. That was her “happily ever after” narrative. This paraphrased Fairytale has lots of Moral stories that can be a lesson to children, young adults and the aged (Heckel et al., 2017). This is portrayed by the character of this young little girl who overcomes obstacles that even her elder sisters fear confronting. This teaches that for one to cause an impact in the lives of others, age is not a barrier, one could be the youngest and yet, they make happen what older people cannot make happen (Alison, 2017). On the other end, it portrays the importance of staying courageous and focused, not giving up (this is shown when she had to go back and confront the giant again to bring back the stolen items). Such stories give lots and lots of moral stories that are important to the current society (it doesn’t matter how old the stories are) (Alison, 2017).
Fairy tales as a source of healing/therapy
There are a number of people who have overcome their life’s struggle by the help of the fairytales and there are others who have learned various virtues and improved their character by the help of these fairytales (Elizabeth Cohen, 2017). Psychiatrists also say that dressing as the fairytale characters can be of so much help psychologically. There are patients who suffer from Obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD) who have been helped through the disorder by being told that they should imagine themselves as Cinderella (Elizabeth Cohen, 2017). Mostly, people who have OCD always want to clean so often because their brains force them to clean even when they don’t want to.
So, imagining themselves as Cinderella would make them have the mentality like that of Cinderella (being forced to clean by the stepmother) (Elizabeth Cohen, 2017). This would draw their attention from their own struggle and put them into the world of Cinderella, and eventually the psychiatrist would tell them to imagine themselves having a beautiful ending like that of Cinderella, which they would do, and when this is repeated, it would cause so much of a therapeutic healing to the patients and they would eventually be able to overcome their Obstacle/Disorder (Elizabeth Cohen, 2017).
Fairytales have a lot of significance that also help various people to improve their image and self-esteem. This means that they have to be fighters of their own selves just as the characters in the fairy tales do ("Introduction - Princes in Fairy Tales", 2017). Even though they get help from friends and other close allies and mentors, it reaches a point where they have to struggle on their own ("Introduction - Princes in Fairy Tales", 2017). For example, while Cinderella is locked up in the basement and the prince comes, she has to struggle to ensure that she gets to where the prince is, she does not rely on the imagination that her godmother would appear again and help her out. Imagery, as used in the fairytale has been a very powerful tool in the lives of many, there is an example of a people called Yogis who was in Tibet, they imagined themselves as supernatural people (deities) in order to enhance what they feel about their image and to feel more in control and in charge (Elizabeth Cohen, 2017). This enlightened them and they felt like they achieved all they wanted just from the use of imagery (Heckel et al., 2017). Symbolism in the fairytales have caused children to view pets with more understanding and knowledge; they have learned to coexist with their pets such as dogs, cats, tigers, and lions (of course those that have been tamed and taken into homes as pets). This has made them know that they can be of much help at certain points in life.
Even though they (these pets) don’t talk like they do in certain fairy tales, they make the children feel like they have a company and as a result would feel stronger and safer when they are around. Maximizing potential has been another characteristic realized in people who watch or read fairy tales, they would feel so emotionally attached to the characters such that they feel like they are the characters and, whenever they are in a particular fix ("Introduction - Princes in Fairy Tales", 2017), they would ask themselves “what would Sofia the first do in such a situation?” and then they would have the courage to face that issue/situation/obstacle.
There is a reason why it is children who are told these stories, it is because they have to learn that life is not always a bed of roses, they could be ...