What fairy tales do you notice in Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me? How does Crusie manipulate the symbolism of the original fairy tales? How do these fairy tales work over the course of the story?
Eventually, you'll need to choose one fairy tale and analyze the imagery and symbolism as it's used throughout the story, so begin to do this now in the comments.
Some places to look:
Crusie's own page about Bet Me.
Student created page on fairy tales in Bet Me.
.
8 comments:
I was not able to find the story on the link and so I went about doing my analyzation of it as the beauty and beast story I know. I think that in this situation at first glance one would peg Min to be the beauty and Cal to be the beast, but after rereading one of my childhood favorites I am to believe that Min is actually the beast. When the Beast found beauty on his property picking roses he captured her and was mean to her and did not give her a chance. That is exactly how Min is. True enough she overheard Cal or at least THOUGHT she overheard Cal betting on sleeping with her she already had a negative mindset on men. David dumping her immediately before she decides to pick up Cal probably did not aid in her opinion on men. She did not give Cal a chance. Just like beauty once she bestowed all the nicest things she could offer the beast he was still reluctant. Simply because he was used to being refused and treated as a "beast" in the past. And much like the story the beast weakend to beauty just like Min weakend to Cal. Then there was a miscommunication, a lost of trust and they have a falling out. But like any other fairy tale they come back together and live happily ever after.
~Victoria Hawkins
Another fairy tale that is also used very often is Cinderella. No only it is refered to with the shoe motif, but also with the fact that Min is depicted as the most insignificant or unattrattive, and nevertheless ends up with the Prince.
Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me for the most part was a pretty good novel. I liked the way she introduced different several fairytales such as Cinderella with the glass slipers ND Min's obsession with cute shoes, Little Red Riding Hood with Min's red hooded sweater, and Beauty & the Beast by calling Cal "the beast" throughout the novel. I mainly will be focusing on two different fairytales that were similar to Bet Me, which are Cinderella and Beauty & the Beast. The only thing that I disliked about this novel was the fact that there were a lot of characters in this novel and makes the reader have to remember who is who. Other than that the novel was pretty good I just think there was to much profanity that was not necessary at times in some of the chapters.
~Kendall Dorr
Kendall, both fairy tales are a good choice, but I really want you to focus on just one fairy tale and the way it is used throughout the book. There's enough imagery to focus on throughout the novel to write a 1000 word paper with just one fairy tale.
And we'll talk about the profanity in class if you'd like to.
The novel i can relate most to Bet me is Cinderella. One of the most obvious leads on this fairytale is the fact that Min is a plain girl, but is beautiful to those who know her. cinderella was also a very beautiful girl; but she was not allowed to shine through because she was given rags to wear. Also, Cal is Min's prince. The shoe is the biggest hint to this fairytale.
As we discussed in class, I will be doing Little Red Riding Hood. The obvious connection of this fairy tale to the book are 1. Mins red hooded sweater 2. Cal being referred through out the text as a wolf. I plan to go beyond the obvious and also talk about how Min being perceived as an innocent character by her family and the reader seeing otherwise. I was also thinking about incorporating something that deals with food because Little Red was taking a picnic basket to her grandmother and through Bet Me we read about food.
Anastasia, that's wonderful with the food--especially the picnic that they have with their first kiss. I think that's a great thing to notice.
Although late, and the paper is submitted, I chose Cinderella as my fairytale. I feel it is seen the most out of all the other fairytales. As I mentioned in my paper, even without using direct character references from what text to the next,the imagery and tone from both the novel and tale are very similar. I love this book!
Post a Comment