Blog #3 Morgan Minor

There were a lot of aspects that I was not familiar with in the Grimm telling of Snow White. I haven’t seen the Disney version in a very long time so I looked up a refresher online. To begin, in the Disney Version, the evil stepmother did not want to boil and eat her liver and heart. She just wanted it in a box to know she was dead. Another difference is that when snow white met the dwarves in the book, it took on a “Goldie locks” style. That didn’t happen in the movie. Also, the amount of times the wicked stepmother tried to kill snow white differed greatly. In the movie it was once, by hiring a huntsman (which also happened in this version), and again with a poisoned apple (also happened). In the Grimm version there are many attempts at her murder. A dress laced to tightly, a poison comb, etc. At the end of the Disney movie, Snow White is brought back by true loves first kiss. In the book however, the poison apple is just luckily dislodged from her throat. The last big difference was in the movie the stepmother did by being struck by lightning, and in the book, she was tortured to dance in hot iron shoes until she fell dead.

The things that surprised me in the story was the amount of times the stepmother tried and failed to kill Snow White, and how she forced to dance in the hot shoes at the end. It was pretty random to me, and kind of gruesome. It was longer and more brutal than the Disney version, which makes sense because they are making children’s movies. Another big surprise was when the dialogue got similar to that of “Goldie locks”. It made me wonder how those two stories got to cross over like that.

Lastly, I think the theme of the story was that Snow White was so fair and so pure and beautiful that evil and ugliness couldn’t touch her. If you are good enough and pure enough it will protect you. I think this is the theme because the multiple attempted murders fail every time and Snow White is brought back more beautiful and fair. This leads me to feel it is meant to make a point that evil can keep trying, but she is too good and fair and it will eventually lose, like the stepmother did.