Not Your Typical "Happily Ever After"!

Welcome!

Would you kill or die for your "Happily Ever After"?

If we said to you, "Today, we are going to talk about a fairytale entitled The Little Mermaid", most of you would envision Ariel and all her sea friends from the Disney version of the book or movie. "Right"? That's because most of us have experienced the Disney beautiful interpretation where Ariel swims about the sea talking to her sea friends, Sebastian and Flounder, dreaming of becoming human, finding the love of her life, marrying the prince, and lives happily ever after. We are all left with that warm, mushy, hopeful feeling inside and everything in life is grand!

But...did you know?

The 1990 adaptation of author Oriol Izquierdo brings on a whole new light of the mermaid, love story, and ending. It is a beautifully illustrated, but grim, retelling of the old Danish fairytale. This version stays true to the tone of the original by Hans Christian. It is a rather dark, bleak, harsh story of a mermaid. She falls in love with a human prince, but her love is rejected and it doesn't have the same beautiful, happy kind of ending that Disney portrays.

 Soooo....Let's give you a little more insight on this version -

“Once upon a time”, there was a little mermaid. This little mermaid lived with her father, grandmother, and five other sisters, her mother had passed away several years ago. The grandmother looked over her granddaughters and told them that once they turned fifteen, they could go adventure out and lie on the rocks where they could see ships, and cities. On her fifteenth birthday, she went to the rocks and was prepared to see beautiful ships and cities. Instead, the little mermaid approached a sinking ship with a prince thrown overboard. The little mermaid saved the prince and fell madly in love with him as she laid him upon some rocks and left. She longed to return and be with the prince but he had no idea she existed.  So, the little mermaid went to the witch and begged to become human so that she could find and marry the prince. The witch agreed to help, but it would cost the mermaid her beautiful voice and she could never return to the sea. In addition, if the prince married another, the mermaid would turn to foam and die. Because of her love for the prince, she agreed to the witch's spell.   After she became human, she found the prince but without her voice, she couldn’t tell him who she was, so he married someone else. While the broken hearted mermaid sat waiting to turn to foam, her eldest sister appeared and tells her that if she takes a knife and kills the prince, the spell will be broken.  The mermaid takes the knife, sneaks onto the ship where the prince and his bride are sleeping....raises the knife....trembling....and then tosses the knife into the ocean.  She leaps over the side of the ship, and her body dissolves into foam. Melodious voices appear and carry the mermaid to live with the daughters of the air in the Realm of the Air.





   Now, let’s look at…..     

What makes this fairy/folk tale traditional literature?

·   It has a sequential plot (it goes in order from beginning to end    of the mermaid’s life.

·   The setting is vague (The setting doesn’t provide details, just says in the sea, and it starts off with “Once upon a time”)

·   Characterization – the characters don’t have given names- just mermaid, witch, grandmother, prince.  Most of them portray all good vs the evil witch.

·         Theme – represents kindness, true love, and making sacrifices.  Good overcomes evil – even if it means death.

·         It contains several motifs - journey/quest- the mermaid seeking true love with the prince. Magic – the witch’s spell.  It also uses flying and transformation – but the spiritual transformation at the end is left untold.

·         It also has variants (More than one version of the same story) For example: Disney version, and the original Hans Anderson.

We will leave you with our opinion of this piece of literature, along with a short video of the Disney ending version.  Please take time to give us your feedback and thoughts of both versions.  Do you think one version is better for the classroom over the other?

What Whitney Thinks

This was a fun version of The Little Mermaid that I have not heard before. Sometimes while reading fairy/folk tales (traditional literature) I get stuck on the most popular version and forget there are other versions out there. For this reason I feel the variance this story has is a great way to show students that there are many versions to many stories and its okay if it’s not the most popular ones. I would use this story in my classroom to get students interested in variance in stories and provide them with different versions to read. I feel students would find this fun and interesting to see how different versions of the same stories may end differently. I do believe this version is fine for most elementary classrooms. I don’t think the death of the little mermaid should keep it out of the classroom. After teaching the students that these stories are fiction, they will understand it is not real and will not be traumatized by the story. They need to be introduced to many different types of reading.

Karen’s thoughts:

I’m guilty as the next person….my thoughts of The Little Mermaid was the Disney, warm fuzzy, rainbows, and happily ever after version.  This story really opened my eyes to something new.  I think it would depend on the ages of my students as to whether I would share this in the classroom.  I did enjoy hearing another version of the story, but I tend to still favor the “mushy” story.  This book is also a bi-lingual book.  It is told in English and Spanish.  I think this would be great for your ELL learners.

 

Which version do you prefer... and why?