Fairy tales are inherently unrealistic and contain illogical facets, but “The Juniper Tree” pushes the bounds of storytelling liberties for me. For one thing, although humans are often transformed into animals, this bird appeared out of a mist rising from a tree after the boy’s flesh and bones had been eaten and buried (respectively). Also, how exactly does the bird chirping convey such a complex message? And how did this “bird” carry a millstone around its little claws that took 20 men to lift, and was so heavy it could kill someone? The bird must be part human, part animal, part magical spirit to be able to do all of these physical things as well as think of a strategy to kill and be able to communicate. His song... I just love his song. I have a specific tune for it I like to whistle.
Clearly this fairy tale is taking advantage of our suspension of belief. Still, the Juniper Tree still contains some important connections with other tales, especially regarding the rampant problem in fairy tales with child abuse. In “Juniper Tree”, the stepmother slams the lid on the boy’s head and it rolls off, causing her to set his head back on with a kerchief. The mother in “Sweetheart Roland” takes a page out of this storybook and goes to chop off her stepdaughter’s head, but accidentally saws off that of her own daughter. And if this weren’t ghastly enough, the mother in “Juniper Tree” feels the need to feed the boy’s steamed body to his father! This is similar to the attempt of Sanna the old cook to eat Foundling after boiling him into good meat. The Juniper Tree shares a lot of plot characteristics with the other tales, but ultimately all of them end up transformed back into their normal, superior state.
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i like your point when you bring up that the bird must be part animal, part human, and part magical to be able to carry out this feat of carrying the mill stone. I had only thought about it being part human and kind of set the magic aside for some reason unknown to me. I think it adds a more interesting element to the figure of the bird in the story.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I'm a big fan of the zinger title, so MAJOR props from this corner.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I think you might be interested in the way I chose to dissect the different forms of the boy/bird. Check out my post for this week, "An Aerial Tangent". Something I notably omitted, that you've pointed out here, is that there is clearly a magical aspect to not only the transformation itself, but the ability of the bird after it transforms. When I put both our thoughts together, I come up with this: could it be that the bird is magical? In other words, perhaps there isn't a separate magical spirit entity, but the physical body of the bird has magical powers?