Witch’s doing Atkins!
Short answer: Because only boys can make beanstalks.
Y’know, it’s really just a folk tale – folk tales being vehicles for conveying values through allegory and double entendre and unspoken messages. Here are the key elements that are meant to remain in the back of a young boy’s mind…
Jack is deemed old enough to go out and run errands for his mother. He has beans. They grow into a huge stalk during the night. Jack climbs up the beanstalk. Up there, he encounters a foe who threatens to kill (and consume) him.
[COLOR=Black]Pad the ending so everything works out okay.[/COLOR]
Some clarifications:
[ul]
[li]Jack is some-when in his early teens.[/li][li]He already has the beans; he’s had them since birth. He carries them around in a little sack.[/li][li]During the night, a huge stalk grows upward from the last known location of those beans. [Girls do not have beans or grow beanstalks.][/li][li]Wow! Magic! He’s never seen that before![/li][li]Being a young teen boy, he is curious and climbs that stalk. Most young boys climb the beanstalk one-handed. [If Jack is climbing two-handed… well… some day he’s gonna make a wife very happy.][/li][li]There’s a dangerous opponent just waiting around for boys to climb the beanstalk. He destroys the ones who succeed.[/li][li]Message: Don’t climb your beanstalk; you won’t be so lucky.:eek:[/li][/ul]
–G!
I just came up with that nonsense in about 10 minutes…:dubious:
I’ve read a number of essays that say the color of Little Red Riding Hood’s outfit is supposed to symbolize menstruation.
Good heavens! :eek:
I thought I was just being ludicrously facetious.
[It makes that spoilered quote above seem that much more appropriate]
–G!?!
Some interesting theories here, serious or not. Obviously, t
Sometime a beanstalk is just a beanstalk.
For some reason the board cut me off mid-sentence. I was saying that obviously the giant is fictional and his preferences are given to him by the writers. I just wonder about the writers’ motivations. Certainly, this is a very old story so some of the theories hold up. But other, modern stories still seem to hold to this formula. I just wonder if it is a bit of backlash against the damsel in distress scenario where the male fills that role. Obviously, I would rather be female than male in most of these stories so as not to end up on the menu. I originally asked this question in response to that same question from my daughter , not about that story, but about a modern story called “Boy Soup” where the giant prepared to make several boys into soup while a little girl stood by unthreatened and conversed with the giant about the fate of the boys. That story was written by a female author and when I looked her up she stated that she had been asked why she didn’t write “Girl Soup”. Her response was that “Girl Soup” just wasn’t funny, implying that “Boy Soup” was. I realize that most people are not familiar with that story but Jack and the beanstalk came to mind and when I looked up the story, most variations also had the giant as a boy-eater as well. The more I looked, the more I found this to be common. There were many stories where the villain or villainess ate exclusively boys, but few which had characters that ate exclusively females. I didn’t know exactly what to tell her, not sure she’ll understand about the Atkins diet. I did find one review that questioned the old man’s motivations and whether he was in cahoots with the giant, send boys up the beanstalk to provide good for the giant.
I was under the impression fairy tales were meant to teach a less and entertain. Jack in the Beanstalk is a warning to adventurous boys. Don’t blunder in unknown situations.
This was a boys story. The main character is a boy. The giant eats little boys.
Yeah, it’s not gender fair. Girls are adventurous too. Change the character to Mary and the giant eats girls when you read it to your kids.
Presumably you mean don’t blunder into unknown situations?
But Jack has a magical adventure and ends up with gold, respect, the internets, and in many versions, some poon.
OTOH If you really mean don’t blunder well that’s advice applicable to every situation. Not all that useful though.
Not to imply that the lesson / message would necessarily make sense…
Actually, I think that she likes that the giant eats boys rather than girls.
Given that the mother is quite irate with Jack for trading the cow for some “worthless” beans, and then is proven wrong when the beans turn out to really be magical after all and lead to wealth, it’s pretty clear to me that the intent of the story was to remind women to stay out of business decisions because their poor female brains simply aren’t up to the task of understanding all of the intricacies.
Yeah, I’m sure that’s what the story is about…
They don’t have the lobes for it?
this is rapidly deviating from the original question.