The Labyrinth of Good Intentions: Transmitting Repressed Trauma via Fairy Tales

  • William Peat Jr.

Abstract

In several novels, the fairy tale is used as a metaphor for the experience of the Holocaust, as a means of either better understanding that experience or for altering dreadful reality. While these narratives provide insight and provoke emotional reactions, they also usually exist in the past. Lisa Goldstein’s story Breadcrumbs and Stones resides in the “now” – the mother and her daughters are still actively suffering from the events of the Holocaust. The reader shares not only their experiences, but is also also placed in the same temporal and spatial proximity as the characters, and thus compelling the reader to ask 'Is there anything that I can do to help them escape from the forest?'

Author Biography

William Peat Jr.
Wavid Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature. He has previously taught in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian.
Issue
Vol. 13 No. 1 (2009)
Section
Emerging Voices
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