The King was terrified when he heard that he himself must kill his dearest children, but he thought of faithful John’s great fidelity, and how he had died for him, drew his sword, and with his own hand cut off the children’s heads. And when he had smeared the stone with their blood, life returned to it, and Faithful John stood once more safe and healthy before him. He said to the king, “Your fidelity shall not go unrewarded,” and took the heads of the children, put them on again, and rubbed the wounds with their blood, at which they became whole again immediately, and jumped about, and went on playing as if nothing had happened.
~Brothers Grimm
When I began this project (check out: Project Grimm for the basis/project charter), I made an assumption that these would be grim stories with a wide variance in content. Boy oh boy, this idea may have gotten away from me. I read Faithful John and immediately had a moment of clarity. This is like boiled down version of the story Job (from the bible) – which made it very upsetting. Based on my initial impression of these short stories, I am afraid they are all going to be in the same vein and won’t be as brutal as I wanted. Everyone always says that the Grimm Brothers are not meant for children, but if the current methodology continues, I will buy this collection of short stories for my new nephews and nieces as their first books.
Now, these stories have harder themes than what can be found in The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar, but they really aren’t much more brutal than an action movie’s trailer. And since children walk around their home while parents watch adult channels (not porn), it is expected that they would be introduced to some violent images. As such, I would argue that the Brothers Grimm aren’t something that could scar children. Now, you are getting my analysis as I read through pieces (right now I have read four short stories), and therefore, my ideas on the Brothers Grimm are limited at best. So, without further ado let’s begin the analysis of Faithful John. [Click “Read More” for spoilers and my breakdown]
This story is a straight forward rigamarole involving a servant who would do anything for his master. It has the classic tropes we all love, a room you shouldn’t enter, a king who doesn’t want to listen, and that one friend who will do anything for you even though you treat him like a piece of shit. When I had to choose the “good guy” so I could pull his moral, I was not feeling it. Obviously, the good guy is Faithful John, but I hated him. He makes the first mistake of being like: “Yo, brotato, don’t go in that room there is something in there that will mess you up”. The king obviously goes in, and since John is faithful, he just bends over and let’s the king right in after failing to dissuade him. Now, what’s in the room, a painting of the most beautiful woman in all the land (a painting that John was told would suck the King in and destroy him). Now, if I was writing this fable, I would have had John immediately destroy that painting and make the moral about humanity’s curiosity and curbing it at all costs.
But that isn’t what the Brothers Grimm wanted to focus on for their good guy moral. Instead, they focus on how you should always be faithful even when you know it will lead to the downfall of the sole person you are charged with protecting (after reading this, I personally think they were paid off buy a monarch to make the peasant class more placated/faithful). In the end, the moral is straight forward, always do the right thing and don’t lie. This leads to John successfully protecting the king, his wife, and their kids while being turned into stone. In the end, John is saved by the king killing his kids to resurrect John (quote above). So John, even though he kills himself, through his faithfulness he is saved by the king, and to show his gratefulness, he saves the kids too – thus no one dies in the end. He is rewarded for his sacrifice because people do the right thing (bullshit).
What I guess would count as a villain in this short story would be the towns people who try to throw John under the bus. Even though John is being a legit ass dude, the folks want to get rid of him and lie about why he is doing what he does. In the end, John is rewarded for being perfectly faithful and the king doesn’t listen to them. Therefore, I guess, I have no idea, the moral from the villain is that you cannot shake the trust of a king with his faithful servant and trying to usurp Faithful John could lead to your death.
So let’s talk about that quote. Pretty fucking gruesome but it reads like a eight year old’s attempt at writing a fable. Everyone dies, but then it all works out in the end because, yay! I guess I chose that quote because the king is kind of impressive. When told he could save his brotato, he grabbed that fucking sword and killed his own kids. From being told what he has to do to performing the action is like two sentences – talk about commitment. Either way, gruesome, but all rainbows and butterflies from this one at the end. Perhaps the next one will provide something more worthwhile.