Lost in the Mines of Butte

On a partly cloudy, but very cold, day in 1937, in Butte, Montana, Mike Eckerson turned to his wife, Melanie, and barked, "Mel, it's too damn cold in this house!" Now Butte was a poor town, and the Eckersons were about as well-off as anyone else in Butte at the time, which meant that they weren't very well off at all. In any case, it was not an uncommon occurrence for Mike to complain about the Farenheits of their modest dwelling on the east side. Melanie then explained to him for the thousandth time that in order for their house to be warmer, they needed more coal to burn, of which there happened to be a shortage.

"But don't forget your cousins are coming tomrrow," Melanie said, trying to take Mike's mind off of things.

"Woman! Why did you have to remind me? They're positively UNnatural!" grumbled Mike.

"I've told you before, they are NOT gay," interrupted Mel, "and gay or not, you will be hospitable to them while they're in this house!"

The next day, the Eckersons went to the train depot and picked up their sexually ambiguous cousins. "Hi Pat! Hi Chris! It's so wonderful to see you two again!" explained Melanie excitedly. "Let's go back to the house for some whiskey."

But when they got back to the house, Pat and Chris were too cold to do much of anything, except complain, especially since they were from Florida. So Mike told them that all they needed was a little coal, and they would be toasty as toast in a toaster; all they had to do was go down to the mines and find some. Pat and Chris were so eager to feel warm that they jumped up that very second and ran out the door to get some coal.

As soon as the door slammed behind them, Melanie jumped out of her favorite chair and yelled at Mike. "What the hell is wrong with you, sending those poor boys out there to the mines?! What if they get lost? They could meet their death!" But Mike simply shrugged.

Meanwhile, Pat and Chris ran to the tops of the mine shaft openings, where one enters the ungerground mines that go all over under Butte. They climbed down and started looking for coal, but soon lost their way and all sense of direction. They had been hopeless walking around for hours, when they saw a small speck of light up ahead. They hurried towards it, thinking that it was a way out, but when they got up close, it was just a man with light on his forehead and a very long beard.

"Haven't seen anyone down here in 20 years!" the older man exclaimed. "Not since the big accident in '17. The corridors just collapsed in on us. Everybody died, everybody... except me. The name's Jeremiah Johnson." He told Pat and Chris that he knew the mines very well, and that he would help lead them out to safety. So the boys followed him around the tunnels, making lefts and rights, and rights and lefts. All of a sudden, the odd party of three approached an underground layer made all out of coal. Pat and Chris could tell that the man had led them to the man's own creepy dwelling, rather than out of the mines.

Suddenly, Jeremiah grabbed an axe and swung it at Pat's head! Chris tackled him, however, grabbed the axe, and swung it as hard as he could into the back of Jeremiah's head instead. He was definitely dead, as his blood and cerebrospinal fluid spurted out of his head. Pat and Chris were upset about this, and still needed to get out of the mines, so they left. They had the foresight to grab a bunch of the coal first, however, so that if they made it out, they would at least be warm.

The two soon noticed that every time they saw a rat, it was heading the same way. And since everyone knows that rats hate water, Pat and Chris realized that the rats must have been traveling in the opposite direction than the Berkeley Pit, and so followed the rodents to safety out of the mines. As soon as they were free, they raced right back to Mike and Melanie's house, and because of the coal they had had the foresight to grab, for the whole rest of the winter, all four of them were, indeed, toasty as toast in a toaster.

Moral: If you're going spelunking, have the foresight to grab a map first, as mines and caves are quite easy to get lost in.

Moral 2: Stay away from Butte. It's cold and full of weirdos!

Learn more about the mines of Butte.

Orality of Hansel and Gretel

I was very disappointed in Hansel and Gretel because I thought that for the story to be balanced, they should have eaten the witch at the end before they went home. Anyone in Montana should know that you don't just kill without eating it-- it's a waste!!

I suppose the problem with that, however, is that planned cannibalism is bad/frightening enough in a children's story that actually implementing the cannibalism, regardless of who is being eaten, is fairly inappropriate. Many critics/scholars have interpreted Hansel and Gretel as being about children's oral obsessions. While this is a rather Freudian interpretation, it can hardly be thrown out with the bath water.

The whole story, especially the Grimm's version and the one Tatar chose to put in the book, revolves around food and eating. In the beginning, the family does not have enough food, so the mother sends the children into the forest to get lost so that her and the husband will have enough food. I would even argue that everyone in the story who currently does NOT have food has better luck with getting it. The mother sends both Hansel and Gretel into the forest with a crust of bread so they don't starve as quickly. The children don't come back because they get lost, and after three days or so, they don't have any food, which causes their luck to turn, so then they find the witch and the candy house, which helps them fill their tummies. But at the time that they find the witch, she doesn't have any food, so she then has better luck than the children in keeping them locked up for fattening up for food for later. Then, since she feeds Hansel lots of food, but Gretel only crab shells, Gretel becomes lacking in food once again, and so is able to triumph over the witch, and pushes her into the oven.

Since their mother died when they were away in the forest and the father was still hungry, he then has good luck in getting his children back, since he didn't really want them to be sent out into the forest to die in the first place. So in the end, everyone gets their food, except the mother and the witch, who (by the way) can be seen as different facets of the maternal figure, which is why one couldn't survive without the other. So when the witch died, the mother had to die too. This is even more Freudian than the issue of an oral fixation, but is not at all unfeasible. Orality is a reasonable theme in a fairy tale for children, since children, themselves, often lead lives centered around food. Mom, I'm hungry. Mom, I wanna go to McDonald's. Mom, I need that candy at the grocery store! Literature as well as advertisements often reflect the audience that it is directed towards.

mythology

Mythology is very similar to children's literature in that all literature seems to stem from it. All the basic storylines of any book or story or movie has roots in mythology or children's (or biblical) literature, and is such at its core wholly unoriginal. Even teeny bopper movies like She's All That is exactly the story plot of My Fair Lady, which is the story plot of ______________. According to Michael Sexson, "Every single story is a retelling of another story, so we have to read the story behind the story."

But I digress! Besides how thousands of stories stem from old children's literature, I was going to talk about how stories stem from mythology also, and often times, the two even intersect. For example, the Disney movie Hercules stems from mythology, but is made for children, and the real story of Hercules is changed to match the structure and content of children's literature, so they ignore the fact that Hercules' tale began with him killing his family. They also add in a romantic love interest, Meg, to make it like every other Disney movie. There are other fairly obvious mythological movies, like Clash of the Titans, Troy, 300, Pandora's Box, and The Odyssey. But there are many other stories and movies that one would not necessarily expect to have mythological roots, such as 2001: Space Odyssey (Prometheus), Silence of the Lambs (Theseus and the Minotaur), The Lion King (Oedipus), The Magnificent Seven (Aeschylus's The Seven Against Thebes), and Star Wars. The latter is more mythological in its characters than its plot. Luke Skywalker is like Orpheus. Hans Solo is like Odysseus. And Obi Wan Kenobi is the wise old man figure of Nestor.

This is a link to movies with mythological roots and elements.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C005854/text/movies.htm

The Really Ugly Duckling

I re-read Jon Scieszka's The Stinky Cheeseman, and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. There are many old fairy tales in them that have been retold in different ways with little twists to them to make them "fairly stupid." I particularly enjoyed Cinderumpelstiltskin and The Really Ugly Ducking. In the latter, all the other ducks won't let the ugly duckling hang out with them (reminiscient of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer), and the poor little guy keeps saying that he will be beautiful when he grows up! But at the end when he finally does, it says that he just grows "up to be a very ugly duck." This, of course, takes the warm, fuzzy feelings of the usually happy endings of fairy tales and flushes it down the toilet. This is not what we expect since we are so used to the mean other uncompassionate "ducks" (this can be generally applied to any fairy tale, story, movie, etc.) getting their comeuppance at the end, and when they do not, it pushes us out of our comfort zone, which is what causes this version of The Ugly Duckling to become humorous for many of us. http://deidret78.tripod.com/id5.html

Cinderella Is Grimm

I was disappointed by the lack of blood and excess of compassion in the Cinderella fairy tale that Tatar decided to print. I wanted the Grimm's version!! And I wanted sparrows to peck those nasty girls' eyes out at the end!! Probably a good reason that others and I were disappointed is that, while fairy tales usually have a "happy" ending, in our culture these days, we don't just want happy in general, we want happiness for the underdog, for the Cinderella's and ugly ducklings, and we want punishment for the people who deserve it; in this version of Cinderella, she just forgives her nasty stepsisters and even lets them come live in the palace with her. I much preferred what happened to the stepsisters in Ever After. The nice, plump one got to continue living her life, and the skinny evil one had to be a servant, in an ironic role-reversal with "Cinderella."
This is the part of the Grimm Brother's version where the stepsisters try to fool the Prince by cutting off parts of their feet! http://www.fln.vcu.edu/grimm/cinderella.htmlla.html
"But she could not get her big toe into it, and the shoe was too small for her. Then her mother gave her a knife and said, "Cut the toe off, when you are queen you will have no more need to go on foot." The maiden cut the toe off, forced the foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the king's son. Then he took her on his his horse as his bride and rode away with her. They were obliged, however, to pass the grave, and there, on the hazel-tree, sat the two pigeons and cried,
'Turn and peep, turn and peep,there's blood within the shoe,the shoe it is too small for her,the true bride waits for you.' Then he looked at her foot and saw how the blood was trickling from it. He turned his horse round and took the false bride home again, and said she was not the true one, and that the other sister was to put the shoe on. Then this one went into her chamber and got her toes safely into the shoe, but her heel was too large. So her mother gave her a knife and said, "Cut a bit off your heel, when you are queen you will have no more need to go on foot." The maiden cut a bit off her heel, forced her foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the king's son. He took her on his horse as his bride, and rode away with her, but when they passed by the hazel-tree, the two pigeons sat on it and cried,
'Turn and peep, turn and peep,there's blood within the shoe,the shoe it is too small for her,the true bride waits for you.' He looked down at her foot and saw how the blood was running out of her shoe, and how it had stained her white stocking quite red. Then he turned his horse and took the false bride home again."