Cinderella, or Humans Pursuit of Happiness - Book Report/Review Example

As the paper makes a synopsis of several versions of "Cinderella", text-to-text criticism will be used to reveal what is different, but also what stays, fundamentally, the same from one country (and consequently, tradition) to the other, where could local influences be found and what are the moral traits and human values cherished by all humanity. Finally, and most important, transactional criticism will be applied in order to reveal new issues regarding a story's possible interpretations. Every story has a happy ending; this very true, but also very obvious statement can be analyzed from many, surprising points of view, but as a primary one, I would like to consider what really lies at the bottom of it.

It is quite usual for a story to have several versions; "Cinderella", for example, has no less than 345 registered versions, and who knows how many unregistered others. Details differ from country to country, from region to region, according to different socio-cultural and even linguistic factors. But what stays the same is the fact that the poor girl will eventually, (and also inevitably) become a princess. Humanity has, at its very basics, one common dream: that of eternal happiness (don't all stories end up with the famous line "And they lived happily ever after").

Here, no matter how different people are due to social, cultural, religious and even financial reason, we will find that seemingly obvious answer to our life's most noble quest: do men deserve to be happy Can they be happy despite their social condition These questions bring the discussion to a more interesting topic, namely: Are stories really intended to be heard only by children Despite all the colorful descriptions and romantic passages, there is one deeper layer to each story, a deeper layer that isn't only an educational one.

Of course, through stories children will learn that it's always better to be kind, but does it really end up here Let us take, for example, "Cinderella" again. She will gain her desired happiness, but only after long years of suffering, and only with divine intervention. Looking at stories from this point of view, we can say that they describe the very nature of humanity: all people have hopes, all people dream, all people do what they think is best; and in the end, when their forces are almost through, they turn to an upper entity, hoping that they will be saved.

Stories thus become the very expression of the human soul, of the human behavior. We are all taught that "good" will eventually bring "good", and that bad will always bring bad. But the most important thing that our childhood heroes show us is that one must never give up hope, that nothing in life comes easy, that even if you work hard you can never achieve anything if you don't believe.Is it really of so much importance if Cinderella's clothes and coach came from a tree she had planted in remembrance of her mother or from her fairy godmother Does it really matter if the shoe she left behind was made of gold or of glass These details differ greatly, and they generally speak about a nation's (or even a region's) traditions and most treasured elements (i.e. "glass vs gold" is only a dispute between two elements that are supposed to symbolize the same thing, namely elegance, delicacy and a superior nature of things; the tree planted at her mother's tomb and the fairy godmother are both the feminine symbol of protection), but the rest