The Tale Explainer

A fairy tale! The children’s eyes lit up. The tale explainer began: “Once upon a time, there was a mother goat. She had seven little kids. As this prototypical introduction shows, this is obviously a fairy tale. In this kind of literature the number seven is the number of completion. Later on it will become important that not all of the little kids are eaten, but instead that all will be saved. We do not know why the father of the goats is not mentioned. The subsequent eating of the little kids can be understood as a violent or sexual act. When you later divide the story into five main paragraphs, you will confirm that the tale follows a graded pattern…” And the lights in the children’s eyes went out.

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