In the bookshop 2 days back, I picked up a classic - Grimm's Fairy Tales - a book containing a collection of 50-odd stories collected by the 2 Grimm Brothers from Germany. The more pages I turn, the more shocked I was. Are children the targets for such reads about witches, blood and gore? It seems to me that one should never aspire to be more that what one is - that if you are a servant to begin with, then you should be in servitude perpetually as well. All servants are ugly in nature and in looks. All masters are beauties with lush golden hair and have good hearts. Should one be above one's lot, then one must be scheming and evil.
What kind of stories are these and for children too? Could things be less grey for kids than they are for adults? I remember reading some of these as a child and yes, bad people should be killed, thrown about in cages full of sharp nails or axed into pieces and good people should retire to their bright gleaming castles and live happily ever after. If this is so, is it true then that kids see more clearly than us adults? That their eyes are less clouded and their actions more genuine?
