Briar Rose Essays (Examples)

riar Rose" and "The Accident" are both stories told by Holocaust survivors that take the reader back to the days of concentration camps, reveal the horrors of their experiences, and show how they are forced to deal with them decades later in completely different worlds. oth stories take place in modern day, where people are the survivors cannot fathom such horrific acts. oth survivors deal with their pain by shutting down but both have different ways of finding peace.
Jane Yolen's "riar Rose" tells the story of the main character, ecca, and her search to discover her dead grandmother's past. The story mixes present day with memories of the Holocaust, and is written like "Sleeping eauty," the fairy tale. When her grandmother, Gemma, dies, ecca finds several clues to her past: a box with keepsakes, old pictures, a ticket stub, a man's passport, an engraved ring, and newspaper clippings. ecca…

Anne Sexton and Alfred Hitchcock
Briar Rose and Blood in the Shower

Introduction to Both Texts

Sexton's Sleeping Beauty goes from an initial anti-feminist slumber of childhood but grows to a later, mature feminist awakening. Hitchcock's Marion Crane goes from an initial feminist empowerment and sexual awakening to anti-feminist slumber and death as the film "Psycho" is more interested in the masculine conflict and journey of the self.

Both "Briar Rose: Sleeping Beauty" by Anne Sexton and Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film "Psycho" were constructed during relatively similar times in American history. Yet in terms of their theoretical construction in regards to feminism, these two works of art seem to come from completely different eras. The country or time of Sexton's imagination takes the myth of Briar Rose, the name of Sleeping Beauty and creates an articulation of initial subjugated childhood female silence that must be resolved through active female empowerment in marital adulthood. "Psycho"…

What is the moral of the story “Briar Rose?” Why do you think it was a frog that delivered the news of the blessing that the queen would receive her wish of having a child?
If the wise women in the kingdom are so wise, then why are they also vindictive, with one of them willing to place a spell on an innocent child just for not being invited to the party?
Does the thirteenth wise woman act only out of vengeance, or do you believe she may also be jealous? Why?
What is the significance of the princess having to turn 15? Is Briar Rose a coming-of-age story?
Time stands still for a hundred years, and in truth no one in the castle actually suffers as a result of the curse. What exactly makes the 100-year sleep a curse?
What is the significance of the spindle and the act of spinning?
The growth of the hedges…

Insightful Critical esponse, Demonstrating an Understanding of the Effect of Medium on Meaning
The story of "Briar ose" uses one story to describe and relate another deeper meaning. The details of one story parallel or overshadow this hidden story now being revealed. The use of the story of a variation of "Sleeping Beauty" is retold by Gemma, a character in the novel, her own personal story is retold and given shape through the fable. She has replaced the horror of Holocaust memories with a fairy tale in the attempt to share her history with her grandchildren. The retelling is a mirror into her past an reflects an actual recorded human history. According to a writer from Britain, David Lodge, the use of the medium of the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty" in this case, resonates to the impression or memory of her present life (Yolen, 1992).

Briar ose" tells a story of…

Forests in Children's Lit
The Dark Forest of Fairy Tales

Fairy tales are rightly seen by many authors and critics from Jung to runo ettelheim as repositories for archetypes and for vital social messages. Additionally, they must be seen as a literary genre by themselves, and elements which may be seen archetypically must also be taken in terms of their literary function. In this light, one can study the role of the forest in fairy tales both as a reference to the archetype of the dark forest and as a social reference to the land outside civilization, and simultaneously be aware of the way in which the forest operates as a literary device to isolate the characters quickly from their familiar world by placing them into another realm. The ways in which forests seem to function in fairy tales to isolate the characters ranges from the very physical to the very esoteric.…

Anne Sexton's literary success did not provide her with inner peace, and like Plath as well she committed suicide by inhaling poisonous gas ("Biography of Anne Sexton," Poem Hunter, 2008). Prophetically, in Sexton's poem entitled simply "anting to Die," she wrote of suicides: "Still-born, they don't always die, / but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet/that even children would look on and smile." However, although most of her poems can be characterized as confessional and psychologically oriented in their subject and tone, not all of them are simply anecdotes from the poet's tormented life. Sexton's willingness to talk about the complicated feelings of mothers, specifically mothers and daughters, was revolutionary for its time, and she also addressed her own issues in light of a long cultural tradition of silencing female voices, as reflected in her poems on fairy tale heroines like Briar Rose and Snow hite. "Beauty is…

).
The Cycladic Female Figurine- Most of the Cycladic sculptures are similar in tone to many of the Stone Age pieces found in the Aegean, Near East and Western Europe. They represent nude women with their arms folded across their abdomens. They have been found in many sizes ranging from a few inches to almost life-size, in graves, settlements, and even in places suggesting idolatry or religious activities. However, some modern scholars think that the term figurines or idols is not really correct. Idols imply a religious function that has not been confirmed and figurines do not fit with some of the larger figures. However, because of the distribution of these pieces of art, we can tell they were popular among the people of Crete and Mainland Greece as well; and their distribution suggests they were produced not just for the wealthy, but had a broader appeal (Doumas, 1969).

The feminine figures,…

Voltaire's "Candide" (lake and Kazin, 1976) contain aspects of anti-religious sentiments. oth epics are quasi-historical -- they provide a commentary on the prevailing times; both works also provide a view into lake and Voltaire's personal opinions and leanings. Voltaire was educated by the Jesuits -- priests belonging to the society of Jesuits. Voltaire railed against the prevailing cultural and religious mores that sought to forget socio-economic conditions to satisfy some pre-ordained, religious (mis)interpretations of divine mandates. lake, similarly, was mortified by the dualism practiced by the religious of the time. He did not like or appreciate the way in which every thing was seen from the point of black or white. If the Church deemed something unfit, the practitioner of that aspect of life came under severe remonstrations and even met the ultimate penalty of death. oth authors struggle against the fact that these rules were beneficial to those…