Week 13
As the semester begins to wind down, and we have time to reflect on the content of this course, I must say that I am impressed by how much I have learned about fairy tales. When I first registered for the class, I assumed it was going to be a really easy class where we just talk about the deeper meaning in fairy tales. This, however, was not the case and I'm actually pretty glad that it was not set up like that because this course ended up really challenging me to critically analyze these fairy tales and draw conclusions from a multitude of different stories. It also challenged me to look a fairy tales in a multitude of different perspectives, much deeper than the face values of the stories. I really enjoyed that each week we looked at a new tale, but I would have appreciated if on Tuesdays we discussed the fairy tale completely- from summarizing to functions to symbolism and then on Thursdays we analyzed it from several different perspectives and then on Sundays have to write a blog regarding what we learned or writing about a different version of the story that we learned for that week. I feel this way because of blog 3- which was my favorite blog. I enjoyed this because I got to read about an African version of a popular fairy tale and it allowed me to connect to the contents of this class in a more personal and interesting way to me. I feel as though this is something I might continue to do this because it really allowed me to get a better understanding of my culture through the fairy tales. At the beginning of this semester, I named Beauty and the Beast my favorite fairy tale but now that I've come to realize that I don't like the implicit message that it sends to kids. Now, I probably would have to say that the Kenyan type of fairy tales because they were much more realistic and very interactive so I feel as though I could listen to stories for longer times than if I had to read them.