April 18th

 Chapter 9: The Soul Music of the Juniper Tree

        The most interesting part of today's reading, in my opinion, was the examination of the Juniper Tree story. In this essay, the idea is presented that this sort of fairytale, actually harbors a sort of "ugliness" that is actually described as peculiar beauty. The story is odd, not much of it making logical sense, yet audiences continue to come back for more. There is something so beautiful within the chaos that readers delve straight back into the world in which they were horrified to enter. 

        In continuing my reading, I further understood that this is the same phenomenon in many types of fairytales. The ones where the beauty dies, the ones with rape, the ones with incestual relations, the ones with broken families and disoriented siblings. It is in this chaos, that we continuously find beauty. Why is that? While I believe part of it is the consistent pursuit of curiosity that cannot be silenced, I also think that as adults, we are drawn to the "happy ending". Growing up with fairytales in our lives, especially the glorified Disney versions, we were taught that every story has a happy ending. Yet, in our everyday lives, we logically know this to not be true. I would go as far to say that our subconscious has tricked us into believing there is hope in even the most detrimental of cases-- the horror within the fairytale. 

        There is also something to be said about the very art form that is fairytales-- creating stories that stick with you for a lifetime. Is this very idea, by nature, the reason that the horrifying details are so attractive? Because we as readers know we will remember it? The author in chapter 9 calls the Juniper Tree, "appallingly beautiful and beautifully appalling," almost like a car accident you can't quite look away from. This push and pull of our senses while going through the tumultuous lives of those involved in the tales we read ultimately, in my opinion, leave our brains with enough emotional ties and dependence on the individual stories, that we remember them and come back for more. 


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