Fairy Tale (Telling Stories)

 

The Young Slave

 The Young Slave is a fairy tale that was written by the great Italian author Giambattista Basile in 1634, so the story is over 350 years old. The social context of the tale occurred in a family of rather noble ranked people who had respect, and a mansion full of housekeepers. The narrative of the story included a Baron, his baroness, the baron’s sister (Cilia), and the main focus, which will be the daughter she procreated by swallowing a petal of rose. One day, Cilia was playing with her friends by trying to jump up over a huge bouquet of rose without a single leaf falling off. Whoever was able achieve that would win, and Cilia by chance was able to jump over, but unfortunately one leaf fell, but she slickly swallowed the leaf to become the winner, but little did she know it was the beginning of a misadventure.

Cilia got pregnant by the act of swallowing a rose, and could not wrap her head around how to explain this phenomenon to anybody, or being accepted with the child in her social environment where she would be regarded as a disgrace. She was able to hide her state till the day she gave birth to a little girl named Lisa. She brought Lisa to the fairies with whom she played the game and told them the truth, and ask their help to give her a charm and raise her for her. The last fairy in a hurry to see Lisa’s face twisted her foot, and in grave pain cursed Lisa to die at the age of seven as her mother will be combing her hair. Curse at those times were granted without doubt. That’s how Lisa died as cursed; her mother kept her in seven crystal coffins as to save her spirit, having hope she will be saved from the doom one day.

An implied social myth is that in a way or the other Lisa will be given justice to live a happy life from the way events happened, she has not asked to be born, and did not do a warn to nobody, therefore God must save and serve justice for innocents here or in the afterlife.

Another social theme implied is that jealousy, and meanness combine for the sake of degrading a person by using your social class can take a bad turn. What goes around comes back around. The baroness inflicted emotional and physical pain in Lisa, eventually the truth surfaced, and it cost her, her marriage.

The baron did see something intriguing in Lisa’s case specially after he gave her the gift she asked from him, which will lead him to find out what Lisa went through with his wife, and overthrown her misery life into a happy one.

Re-telling the Fairy Tale

In the grandiose garden of a peaceful running fountain, peacocks showing of their wings, and woman breast feeding while cooking in the Kingdom of a rich Indian palace named Arjun, were playing Ashan and her friends as they do every afternoon before dusk. Ashan, a joyous and confident girl, won’t miss an opportunity to be a winner among her friends. She was envied by all of her friends in a good way; however, Ira, the villain friend planned to trap her in a game. Ashan, a typical five feet tall, was among the shortest girls of the group. 

Ira decided that whoever could jump of the little river without falling would win the game they played that day. Knowing Ashan has a competitive mind, she put some rusty pointy pins and cursed the pin to cut her so she could bleed to death, otherwise become a handicapped for the rest of her life.

The first two friends jumped over successfully, but arriving Ira’s turn she got trapped in her own wickedness. Ahsan was able to get help from her brother’s servant in the palace to rush Ira to the care center. She ended up being handicapped for the rest of her life. All of her friends got married, and became mothers’.

Ira’s got pregnant by a black slave of the city who denied the fatherhood, and led Ira to be an outcast until before she died. By then, she had written a letter to Ashan, telling her about the misfortune that she originally initiated for her.

Ashan wanting to meet her and tell her how she forgives her, but she came to find out she had died. Ashan always with a good heart adopted Ira’s child, and raised her to be successful.

The moral of the story is that we should always be good at heart, in our action, and we may face trials, and tribulation in life, but God shall always have our backs.