Example of Double-Column Way of Responding to a Text
| "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" | |
| Parts of the Text (summary or quote) | Response to the Text (commentary, question, connection to experience or other reading, making sense of the parts) |
| beautiful daughter of a king girl, all in white
house unoccupied, falls asleep, seven dwarves find her and see beauty; bargain struck
poisoned apple offered by stepmother in disguise
awakened by kiss of passing prince who sees her beauty
|
The girl is white, symbolic of purity and innocence.
Also, it seems that to be valuable, she has to be royalty. Why so many mean stepmothers in fairy tales? I've read about the psychological reasons why mothers and daughters have such boundary problems. Women in a family often seem to have problems feeling they're too close to each other. Does this murderous rage come out of competition for the man? It's hard to imagine a fairy tale in which the father and son competed to see who was more handsome! Men come across as pretty good in this story. Is this typical in fairy tales? The women are shrewish and the men are good-hearted? I'm not sure what this move to a woods--sort of a natural world plus kind of magical with all those dwarves, who are men but not princes; they really aren't sexual beings in the fairy tale. Is this just a plot device to foreshadow the apple lady? Again, the stepmother reveals her evil? There's nothing redeeming about her, but she actually seems rather pathetic--so reliant on her personal beauty for her sense of self worth The man to the rescue again. And what is he struck by? Her intellect? Her physical strength? Even her capacity to love? No. She's simply beautiful (and white, therefore innocent and therefor acceptable). The social order of the world is re-established. If you're beautiful and innocent (virgin, pure), you'll get your man and live happily ever after. |
Theory About How All the Parts Fit Together (Theme): What I think the main effect of the story of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" is: The fairy tale is the provides the perfect indoctrination for all girls into our society. It helps them understand that they should be passive, helpless, virgin, and, above all, beautiful and innocent so that they can overcome whatever evil there is by finding the right man, who will marry her and thus give her happiness for ever after.