The Zoology of Fairy Tales

When I read both the Arne/Thompson and Propp pieces, I found it slightly humorous because all I could think of was the Linnaean Taxonomy system, where things are carefully classified by their component characteristics almost ad nauseam. While I can genuinely understand how classification systems are helpful, and it makes a lot of sense to take large diverse groups (like living organisms or fairy tales) and separate them using a set of common characteristics, but I have always struggled to understand how such classifications are helpful beyond simply allowing humans to place things into boxes. I do understand that once you have things in smaller groupings you can compare and contrast them, but while I feel like that may tell us about how the things relate, it does not actually tell us about the things themselves. Now, I realize, yet again, that this may be the history major in me, but I personally am much more interested as to why the Norwegian story of Katie Woodencloak had an ox and so many Cinderella-esque elements than the fact it is a Donkeyskin story containing three dresses, and evil stepmother and church attendance...or whatever plots or motifs Arne/Thompson would use to classify it. This is the problem I have with Propp, too, is the fact that I cannot stand his attempt to analyze literature as some sort of independent entity from the society that created it. It is interesting that Propp studied hundreds of stories and managed to distill them down to a series of thirty one events that always occurred in a single order. However, I feel like the system is too vague to actually tell us anything meaningful, especially since there is no way to know at what point he reached his 31 steps and just figured out a way to apply that to the rest of the fairy tales he came across (I'm cynical, sorry). In the end, my problem with these classification systems is the fact that they attempt to analyze the fairy tale as some sort of self-contained entity, self-sustained, rather than a more integrated, almost more organic, form of expression. The classifications are a fascinating intellectual exercise, but I do not believe it helps us understand fairy tales any better, it only allows us to organize them.