This story has been in heavy rotation in the Father/Son reading hour lately.
First, the story stinks as a moral tale. The giant didn’t do anything to Jack. Yet, Jack robs him repeatedly.
The first two times, I can forgive Jack. He was starving. Peasant Life was hard in the middle ages.
Yet, when Jack goes back the third time for the harp, the story acknowledges it was sheer greed.
And when the giant has the audacity to try to defend his home from theives, the narrator seems to praise Jack’s decision to murder him.
(In elementary school, we put Jack on trial for murder.)
That has always bothered me. A crappy morality lesson.
But I had always been so focused on that part of the story that another part escaped me.
What’s the deal with the man trading the magic beans for a cow? Was he a shyster who accidentally sold him a pile of magic beans? Or was he a real magician who knew the beans were magic. Then why did he trade them for a cow? Was it because he was afraid of the giant?
Seems like there is more to that guy’s story.
I was Bill Willingham would tackle this issue in his Fables series.
Anyone ever see this old man discussed more in detail?
Did you also miss the part that the harp was an enchanted human, held prisoner by the giant?
At least in the Big Book of Mother Goose I had as a child, it was.
Piece of advice- never try to analyse “The Brave Little Tailor,” or, as my oldest (now 14) puts it, “The story about that lying, cheating, punk. Somebody should call the cops!”
Lots of fairy tales and folk tales are not quite about what they seem. Bruno Bettleheim (for all his faults) does a great analysis in his book THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT. Basically, the giants and ogres in fairytales are parents and adults. To the very young child, parents can be act in ways that are very frightening. It’s psychologically troubling to recognize this, but the folk tales cast those behaviors in the form of giants, ogres, wicked step-parents etc.
The moral being taught is not that it’s OK to lie and murder, but that being clever (and helpful to mother, and all that) means that you’ll grow up OK in the end… even if circumstances seem to be against you. Jack’s position is pretty much hopeless in any reasonable sense: little boy vs giant, who do you bet on? Yet he comes out on top. Brute strength isn’t everything (like in the Little Tailor, and many other stories as well.) Stories about tricksters teach the kiddies that you can think creatively, and that’s good to do.
Also, in most versions, the giant has stolen the gold (and whatever else Jack gets), so there’s some sort of poetic justice hidden in there.
Don’t forget that the giant took the first aggressive action. Jack was just exploring a strange new place, but the giant wanted to make bread from his bones. He got what he deserved, IMHO.
Dear God I wish the Freudians would leave folklore and mythology alone… It’s bad enough they have to screw up psychology, but moving into other fields with their nonsense is just way out of line. The giants and ogres and not parents and adults… they are monsters, outsiders, foreigners, and so forth and so on.
Most of the children’s tales we know about were built up on older mythology. Jack the giant killer and most of those variants are based directly on Odyseus in the cave of the cyclops Polyphemus and various other legendary monster slayers. Those myths were not meant for kids, they were religion, and the monsters certainly were not parents and adults.
Now certainly people can read whatever they want into them, and the Freudians certainly are masters at that, but that doesn’t mean that they are right, especially when the evolution of the story very clearly can be traced back to origins completely different than the nonsense they are spouting.
Jack killed the Giant because the giant was some big ol’ monster. He eats people, for crying out loud.
If you’re interested in an different twist to the tale that does somewhat explore his motivations might I suggest this mini-series? It’s rather interesting actually.
I do disagree with the Freudians (e.g. Bettleheim) on such issues as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves should really be Snow White and the Seven Phallic Symbols.”* But at heart all tales (even religious ones–unless you happen to believe those tales) are intended to allow the reader to identify with the story and learn from it. If it was just a random sequence of events, no one would care about the story.
The basis for the tale may come from Grecian mythology, but after a few centuries of people fiddling with it to target their children it is going to have to do with kids and what the things they need to strengthen in themselves.
I just want to see the poster for the Disney version this interpretation. Snow White standing there with seven stubbies jumping up and down, frolicking on the grass…
Nobody is arguing that the entire thing is just random… it still has to make a good story. But it doesn’t have to be full of obscure (or especially sexual/Oedipal) meaning. The original meaning – fighting adversity, and coping and prevailing… standard monster stuff – is still probably the most powerful meaning there is.
Besides, a fair number of children’s stories are actually quite random… and they get retold because they are just weird and funny. But then those would be ones typically lacking in any sort of real plot or anything and not the kinds of ones we are talking about.
And that’s not really any different from a lot of the stories meant for adults either. And most of these stories don’t have a whole lot of fiddling that’s really been done to them. Jack the Giant Killer is almost a straight copy of the old myth, and the Jack and the Beanstalk version just changes some of the trappings involved. The fundamental story is largely the same.
In one version of Jack and the BS (I got this version in Australia), all the items Jack took from the Giant originally belonged to Jack’s father and mother. Mom and Jack lived in poverty because “The Giant” killed his father and robbed the family. The Bean Trader was Jack’s fairy god-father who gave Jack the method to reclaim his family treasure, but at a cost. Jack had to make a rational, adult choice. It’s his first test in this story about Jack changing from lazy ner-do-well to family provider (i.e., becoming a man). He has to defeat the Giant through three classic trials of strength and cunning to prove that he is worthy of his manhood. This allows him to take his rightful place in the community as an adult. The Welsh triads have a several variations on this theme.
It’s a simple transaction folks. The magician had plenty of other magic beans. But, what he really needs is a cow. Fairytales are filled with magicians who have a surplus of some odd or rare item but really need something more mundane.
Frau Hulda has plenty of exquisite ball gowns and treasure for plenty dowries. But, she hates to do her own choes, simply hates it. So when a girl offers to do those chores, Hulda feels a great burden lifted from her and is happy to part with a tiny fraction of her vast wealth.
The fairy folk have an abundance of magical food and wine, and vast halls of treasure. But, what they really want is human children.
The brownie/tomthte/domovoi has all kinds of magical powers. But, what they really want is some nice bread and a cup of milk.
The first European explorer to land on a Polynesian island would want bananas, pineapples and other plants he had never seen before. The islanders would be happy to trade these common things for iron and glass. The European would be equally happy to get these rare and new plants in exchange something he could get cheaply and quickly in any port back home.
