Ancient Stories: The Brother and The Sister

In this episode of the Navigating An Ancient Faith Podcast, we dive into the rich and haunting Grimm Brothers’ tale, The Brother and The Sister. 🦌 We explore its three-part narrative arc: the siblings’ escape into the wilderness, the brother’s dangerous transformation during the hunt, and the magical events that unfold in the palace. 👑 Along the way, we unpack themes like childhood trauma, emotional growth, and the tension between our impulsive and rational selves. 🔮 We also examine recurring fairy tale motifs—the wicked stepmother, the transformative power of the wilderness, and the search for wholeness through suffering. 🌲 Join us as we peel back the layers of this timeless story, reflect on its deeper symbolism, and invite you to share your own insights into what it might mean today. 💡✨

-----------------------------

Read 📖 the article, The Wisdom of Ancient Stories

-----------------------------

Visit our website: Navigating An Ancient Faith

Sign up for our Newsletter

Email us at info@navigatinganancientfaith.com

Visit our Fanlist page for questions, comments, or to support the show.

Discuss on our Facebook Group

Chapters

• 0:00 Symbolic Patterns in Fairy Tales
• 13:46 The Brother and The Sister
• 28:04 Overarching Themes
• 31:51 Act I: The Journey Through The Wilderness
• 41:47 The Tiger, The Wolf, and The Fawn
• 54:29 Act II: The Hunt
• 1:09:59 Act III: The Castle and The Witch's Spell
• 1:25:37 The Curse Is Broken

Transcript

The Brother and The Sister

David: [00:00:00] I wonder if that is this thing that happens when you have a kid, a major milestone in your life. It's like brings back childhood trauma. 

JR: Yeah. That's kind of cool. I like that. 

David: And I wonder if the smothering fire is, she has a kid and it's like all of this childhood trauma comes back and smothers her ability to properly be a mother.

JR: Yeah. It's almost like she learned how to become the ideal woman in the wilderness and became queen, but when she became a mother, all that trauma came rushing back. Yeah. That may be it. I like that. 

David: Yeah. I wonder if that's, yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. It occurred to me when you said that, you called it smothering fire, and I'm like, yeah, that's the smothering stepmother coming back, huh?

JR: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll take that little tidbit and stick it at the front. Yeah, that'll be the intro. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's true.

David: All right. So we've been getting some feedback from some of our listeners and I [00:01:00]think from some of our listeners, one reminder that's good to throw out there for people is that when you just listen to one of these fairytales once, or if you read it, it just read it once, a lot of these things aren't going to jump out at you.

Yeah. Because some of our listeners were saying, well, I'm not getting what you're getting out of it. But I've only listened to it once. And so maybe just upfront, I think we should acknowledge that, you and I have read through all these Grimm fairy tales. We text back and forth say, Hey, read this one.

But then once we decide on which ones we're doing, like I read through them several times and at least my experience is I can read through them five or six times. Right. And I see something different every single time. And then you and I have conversations about it. Right. And so, and that don't expect to be there at that point when you just first listen to this fairytale that we're gonna talk about today or any of them.

JR: Yeah. And when you and I talk, it kind of adjusts the way I view it also. So, just the [00:02:00]conversation kind of sands off some of the rough edges. And helps me see things in a different way. And I think the fact that we started off with Red Riding Hood is one that everybody knows. So it was easy to kinda listen to that one and say, yeah, I know that story and to kind of follow along with our commentary on it.

But some of these others, you know, the one we're gonna do today, is not very well known, so you probably haven't heard it. So it's very difficult to listen to this one. This is the complex one, but it's difficult to listen to a complex fairytale or a story or a myth and immediately be able to say, oh, you know, it just pop in your head.

That's what this is about. yeah. We'll, yeah, And also if, if you prefer, you can see all these online, these are all public domains. So you can just Google Red Riding Hood Grimm, or "One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes Grimm". And the story will come up and you can, you know, if you kind of prefer, if you're at work, if you have a screen, you can kind of read through it.

And it's a little bit different when you read it than when you listen to it. You know, you kinda get a little bit different takes you know, you highlight things. And yeah, we'd encourage that if you prefer [00:03:00] reading, Google any of these and you'll find 'em online without any difficulty. 

David: Yeah, that's right.

So bottom line is we don't expect you to listen to this once and all of these things that jump out at you, that we're gonna talk about. 'cause that's not what we're doing. We're being upfront about that. You know, you and I discussed these several times and you see things that I don't see, I see things that you don't see.

And through that conversation, and we try to capture that, some of that on each episode. Kind of that live moment where a light bulb goes off. Oh yeah. But, you know, we kind of come to a pattern that seems to fit the entire fairy tale. But yeah, to your point today we're gonna talk about The Brother and The Sister.

I don't think you and I have totally landed on a really satisfying pattern that runs all through this fairytale, but there's a lot of really interesting symbolism and meaning in this story as well. 

JR: Yeah. We'll be doing this on the fly a little bit, and this might be one of those episodes where at the end of it, where like going, man, you know, tomorrow it'll hit me.

And I [00:04:00] wish we had, we may have to record an ex extra section or something like that where we figure this out. That's right. Lots of times when we're done, we're like, man, why didn't we say this? Why didn't we say that? Right. But that's just kind of part of the conversation the way this works. 

David: Well, and in fact, you text me, about a week ago and you said something like, I've been thinking about the brother and sister.

I laid awake till two in the morning and I think I'm onto something. Yeah. And that, that's how these fairytales work, right? Yeah. Like they stick in your head. They're easy to remember, but once you start looking for those patterns and those symbols, yeah, there's a bigger meaning going on. 

JR: Yeah. It got in my head in the middle.

David: And sometimes it'll just hit you.

JR: Yeah, yeah. And, and exactly that. I was just staring at the ceiling, running through all the, you know, kind of the story. And I was, and stuff makes a lot more sense at two in the morning. It may completely fall apart when you wake up and try to write it down and you're like, what was I thinking?

But anyway, at the time I was like, man, this is making sense, man. And I think I do have a little bit of an idea on how to break this down. But it, it's a little bit disjointed and a [00:05:00] little bit complex. So anyway, don't listen to the story and think that you're supposed to have this figured out.

'cause we sat up many nights trying to figure it out ourselves.

David: That's right. That's right. And I do think this was one of the first ones that you and I were talking about when I was at your place at Thanksgiving. Yeah. I think this is one of the first ones that were like, have you read this one? What do you like, what do you think?

Maybe we should talk about these things more. You know, so it'd be fun to revisit that as well. 

JR: Well, yeah, when we were talking about it at Thanksgiving, it was the type of thing.

I think the reason we liked this one so much is there were so many symbolic elements that while maybe the whole story didn't make sense to us, we kept seeing this recurrence of the symbolic elements of the wilderness and the castle and things like that. And so we kind of thought it'd be a good idea to start this conversation off with, you know, kind of revisit.

I think we did this back in Judges, the, the series where we kind of talked about the wilderness camp, right? Yeah. this would be a good one to kind of, revisit that idea [00:06:00] of the wilderness and the camp and the fringes. Why don't you walk through that before we hear this story, because I think some of those elements are gonna play out as we hear this fairytale.

David: Yeah. So there's a common pattern that's laid out. And once you see it in the ancient world, once you see it, you start to see it everywhere. It's all through the Bible. Like once you know the pattern to look for, it's all through the Bible. And I think we've referenced it several times in various episodes, but what's interesting to me is you start to see it in these fairytales too, because again, this is pre-enlightenment.

This is the ancient way of thinking. And so there's this pattern of the way the city and the wilderness and the unknown is laid out. So typically what you'll have is you'll have a city or a town, and in the Bible you can think of it as the temple or a holy mountain. Sometimes I is at the center of the town because that's the center point, right?

That's the axis of that society. Right? I. So [00:07:00] around the Holy Mountain or around the tent or the tabernacle, you have the leaders of the various tribes. And then you have basically the, what you would say, the citizens of that town. Right? Right. And that's, that's kind of a basic pattern.

But then at the edge of town is where you encounter the fringe. And so sometimes we talk about the fringe, right? Mm-hmm. I, I think we talked about that last episode even. Well, when we're talking about the fringe, that's what we're talking about. People who have a place in that society, but they shouldn't be at the center of town, so to speak.

Right. Yeah. Because the center of town, that's where, you know, that's the holy mountain, all that. So the fringe is the people who have a place in society. But what would you say if they have too much influence, and this is going back to last fairytale, things start to go awry. Okay? Right. And in the Bible, you see different groups of people at the edge of the camp, right.

Or at the fringes of what the national [00:08:00] boundaries of Israel, things like that. 

JR: Okay. 

David: Right, right. So then once you move past that, then you have the wilderness. And the wilderness motif is all through scripture. Right. What's interesting, we've mentioned this several times, is in these Grimm's fairytales, the wilderness is the woods.

Because this is in medieval Europe, right? Mm-hmm. The great forest, right? Right. And so when someone leaves the known of society, they enter the woods. And just looking ahead at this fairytale right now, in the very first paragraph, the brother and sister say, let's go out into the wide world.

And then they came to the Great Wood. Right, right. So that's that's a clue right there. Yeah. They're entering the wilderness. And we've talked about the wilderness just to revisit. It's the place of danger. It's also the place of opportunity. It's often the place where you can get out of your normal routine and actually encounter God also.

JR: Right. A place of testing also.

David: Like it's all that Yeah, it's, it's a lot of things, but you don't encounter it in the town, basically. Right, [00:09:00] right. And so then beyond the wilderness, you just have a, in the ancient world, just the general unknown. It could be the next kingdom, but it also could be an unknown people that are gonna be hostile to you.

JR: Right, right. Yeah. Just the outsider is beyond the wilderness and the outsider could be, it could be benevolent, it could be terrible. Right. It's just complete unknown, 

David: Yeah. So that's a very typical pattern. On the website, and I'll put a link to it. I actually wrote an article that describes the pattern of the wilderness camp for some other stuff we're doing.

So there is an article on there if you want to kind of read through it and understand it a bit more that kind of lays it out. I'll put that link in the show notes. But you do see similar patterns in these fairytales. So often, the next kingdom is across the great woods, And that next kingdom represents the unknown.

You said the outsider, right? They could be friendly, they could be hostile, it could represent, a whole [00:10:00] transformation, or it could represent a threat. 

JR: At the very least, it represents a new idea, a new way of thinking. A as far as the fairytale motif goes, if you go to the next kingdom, they usually think about things differently.

And so it's, it's whether we adopt that, whether we accept the new kingdom and are integrated into it, or it remains on the outside whether it remains a distant land. Right. And so it's, it typically is, yeah. Is kind of the new ideas, uh, new ways of thinking. I don't know. That's the way I think of the neighboring kingdoms.

They think differently. 

David: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. It's a new idea that it's going to come in contact and maybe clash some with how we've always done things in this village. You're right. And what's interesting is one of the motifs you see, and we'll see it again in this one, is transformation happens because someone left the village or the house. Mm-hmm. Right. Went through the woods and encountered a king or a prince from the next kingdom over. And that's that contact with the new idea. And [00:11:00] that's often when transformation takes place. 

JR: Yeah. And this is, I mean, look, psychology talks about this from moving into the known to the unknown.

That's where you learn, that's where you grow. Where you can't really grow if you stay at home, if you're living in mom and dad's basement, right? And so these stories are always being drawn out of what you know, into the unknown so you can grasp opportunity and grow and become something different.

And this is a wonderful story. It, it definitely has that theme all through it, but it also kind of has that psychology, well, we'll get into it afterward, but psychology 1 0 1. You know, we're gonna have to tackle some of that to understand this. But yeah, stepping out of what, you know, so that you can widen your understanding. That's the purpose of stepping into the unknown. 

David: Yeah. Again, once you have that pattern in your head, you'll start to see little hints of it all through these stories. And so we thought we'd just lay it out for our audience really quick.

Again, I know we've covered it before. I know we've hinted at it throughout some of these stories, but I thought it'd just be a good time to lay that [00:12:00] out. Today we're gonna talk about, the fairytale, The Brother and The Sister, and just a couple tidbits, and then we'll listen to the story. But I, I think this one is actually probably one of the older ones.

And one of the things that you and I heard somewhere else is that this may be a precursor to the whole story of Hansel and Gretel. Right. Which I thought was kind of interesting. 

JR: Yeah. You can see it at the beginning of it. Now the entire story kind of takes a different turn from what you understand of Hansel and Gretel.

But yeah, it's almost like the Hansel and Gretel story was taking the first part of this story and sort of refining it a little bit.

David: Yeah. And then adding the back part of this story as well. So, right. Anything else you wanna talk about before we go ahead and play this fairytale? 

JR: Yeah. Look for the, wilderness kind of transition in the new Kingdom. But also recognize that it's kind of, you'll see it presented in three parts. to your point about the Hansel and Gretel story, it's almost like they took the first part of this story and made the [00:13:00] Hansel and Gretel story that we know out of the first part.

But then you gotta go into the second part and the third act and, you know, it takes on a little bit different life. But it's almost like as you listen, there'd be little things that pop in your head like, oh, I wonder if this is about the development of a child.

I wonder if this is about, trying to hold back someone's masculinity. You know, there's gonna be little things that pop in your head all through this, but, focus on all the imagery and a lot of these things will pop out and you'll see why this story is so intriguing to us from the very beginning.

But then pulling it all together, that's gonna be the challenge of this episode. And we'll do our best to do it. But yeah, kinda let your mind run with some of this imagery that you're about to see. And, uh, yeah, it's a fun Listen, you'll enjoy it. 

David: Yeah. So here's The Brother and The Sister.

The Brother and The Sister

Narrator: The brother took his sister's hand and said to her, since our mother died, we have had no good days. Our stepmother beats us every day, and if we go near her, she kicks us away. We have [00:14:00] nothing to eat, but hard crust of bread leftover. The dog under the table fares better. He gets a good piece every now and then.

If our mother only knew how she would pity us. Come let us go together out into the wide world. So they went and journeyed the whole day through the fields and meadows and stony places, and if it rained, the sister said the skies and we are weeping together. In the evening, they came to a great wood and they were so weary with hunger and their journey so long that they climbed up into a high tree and fell asleep.

The next morning when they awoke the sun was high in the heaven and shone brightly through the leaves. Then said the brother, sister, I am thirsty. If I only knew where to find a brook that I might go and drink. I almost think that I hear one rushing. So the brother got down and led his sister by the [00:15:00] hand and they went to seek the brook.

But their wicked stepmother was a witch and had known quite well that the two children had run away and had sneaked after them as only witches can and had laid a spell on all the brooks in the forest. So when they found a little stream flowing smoothly over its pebbles, the brother was going to drink of it.

But the sister heard how it was saying in its rushing, "He a tiger will be who drinks of me. Who drinks of me a tiger will be." Then the sister cried, pray to your brother, do not drink, or you'll become a wild beast and will tear me to pieces. So the brother refrained from drinking though his thirst was great and he said he would wait until he came to the next brook.

When they came to a second brook, the sister heard it, say "He, a wolf will be who drinks of me, who drinks of me, a wolf will [00:16:00] be." Then the sister cried, pray, dear brother, do not drink, or you will be turned into a wolf and will eat me up. So the brother refrained from drinking and said, I will wait until we come to the next brook and then I must drink, whatever you say, because my thirst is so great. And when they came to the third Brook, the sister heard how in its rushing it said, "Who drinks of me a fawn will be, he a fawn will be who drinks of me." Then the sister said, oh my brother, I pray, drink not, or you will be turned into a fawn and will run far away from me.

But he had already kneeled by the side of the brook and stooped and drunk of the water, and as the first drops past his lips, he became a fawn and the sister wept over her brother and the fawn wept also and stayed sadly beside her. [00:17:00] At last, the maiden said, be comforted dear Fawn. Indeed, I will never leave you.

Then she untied her golden girdle and bound it round the fawns neck and went and gathered rushes to make a soft cord, which she fastened to him. And then she let him on and they went deeper into the forest. And when they had gone a long, long way, they came at last to a little house. And the maiden looked inside, and as it was empty, she thought, we might as well live here. And she fetched leaves and moss to make a soft bed for the fawn. And every morning she went out and gathered roots and berries and nuts for herself and fresh grass for the fawn who ate it out of her hand with joy. At night when the sister was tired and had said her prayers, she laid her head on the fawns back, which served a pillow for her and softly fell asleep.

And if only the brother [00:18:00] could have got back his own shape again, it would've been a charming life. So they lived a long while in the wilderness alone. Now it happened that the king of the country held a great hunt in the forest. The blowing of the horns, the barking of the dogs, and the lusty, shouts of the huntsmen sounded throughout the wood and the fawn heard them and was eager to be among them.

Oh, he said to his sister, do let me go to the hunt. I cannot stay behind any longer and begged so long that at last she consented. But mind she said to him, come back to me at night. I must lock my door against the wild hunters. So in order that I may know you, you must knock and say, little sister, let me in.

And unless I hear that, I shall not unlock the door. Then the fawn sprang out and felt glad and merry in the open air. [00:19:00] The king and his Huntsman saw the beautiful animal and began at once to pursue him in their hunt. But they could not come within reach of him for when they thought they were certain of him, he sprang away over the bushes and disappeared.

As soon as it was dark, he went back to the little house and knocked at the door and said, little sister let me in. Then the door was open to him and he went in and rested the whole night long on his soft bed. The next morning, the hunt began anew and when the fawn heard the hunting horns and the tally hoe of the huntsman, he could rest no longer and said, little sister, let me out. I must go.

The sister opened the door and said, now mind you must come back at night and say those same words. When the king and his hunters saw the fawn with the golden collar, again, they chased him closely, but he was too nimble and swift for them. This lasted the whole day, and at last, the hunter surrounded him and one of them wounded [00:20:00] his foot a little so that he was obliged to limp and to go slowly.

Then a hunter slipped after him to the little house and heard him as he called out, little sister let me in. And saw how the door opened and shut again after him directly. The hunter noticed all this carefully and he went to the king and told him all that he had seen and heard. Then said, the king, tomorrow we will hunt again.

But the sister was terrified when she saw that her fawn was wounded. She washed his foot, laid cooling leaves around it and said, lie down on your bed dear fawn, and rest that you may soon be well. The wound was very slight so that the fawn felt nothing of it the next morning, and when he heard the noise of the hunting outside, he said, I cannot stay in. I must go after them. I shall not be taken as easily again.

The sister began to weep and said, I know [00:21:00] you will be killed, and I left alone here in the forest and forsaken of everybody. I cannot let you go. Then I shall die here with longing answered the fawn. When I hear the sound of the horn, I feel as if I should leap out of my skin.

Then the sister seeing that there was no help for it, unlocked the door with a heavy heart, and the fawn bounded away into the forest, well and merry. When the king saw him, he said to his hunters, now follow him all day long until at night comes and see that you do him no hurt. So as soon as the sun had gone down, the king said to the Huntsman, now come and show me this little house in the wood.

And when he got to the door and knocked at it and cried, little sister let me in, the door opened, the king went in, and there stood a maiden, more beautiful than any he had seen before. The maiden shrieked [00:22:00] out when she saw, instead of the fawn, a man standing there with a gold crown on his head. But the king looked kindly on her, took her by the hand and said, will you go with me to my castle and be my dear wife?

Oh, yes, answered the maiden. But the fawn must come too. I could not leave him. And the king said, he shall remain with you as long as you live and shall lack nothing. Then the fawn came bounding in and the sister tied the cord of rushes to him, and led him by her own hand out of the little house. The king put the beautiful maiden on his horse and carried her to his castle where the wedding was held with great pomp. So she became Lady Queen and they lived together happily for a long while. The fawn was well tended after and cherished, and he could bold about the castle garden.

Now, the [00:23:00] wicked stepmother whose fault it was that the children were driven out into the world, never dreamed, but that the sister had been eaten up by wild beast in the forest, and that the brother and his likeness of a fawn had been slain by hunters. But when she heard that they were so happy and that things had gone so well with them, jealousy and envy arose in her heart and left her no peace. And her own chief thought was how to bring misfortune upon them. Her own daughter, who was ugly as sin and had only one eye complained to her and said, I never had the chance of being a queen.

Nevermind, said the old woman to satisfy her, when the time comes, I shall be at hand. After a while, the queen brought a beautiful baby boy into the world, and that day the king was out hunting. The old witch took the shape of a bed chamber woman and went [00:24:00] into the room where the queen lay and said to her, come, your bath is ready. It will give you refreshment and new strength quicker, or it will be cold. Her daughter was within call. So they carried the sick queen into the bathroom and left her there, and in the bathroom they made a great fire so as to suffocate the beautiful young queen.

When that was managed, the old woman took her daughter, put a cap on her and laid her in the bed in the Queen's place. She gave her also the queen's form and countenance. Only, she could not restore the lost eye. So in order that the king might not notice it, she had to lie on the side where there was no eye. In the evening when the king came home and heard that a little son has been born to him, he rejoiced with all his heart and was going at once to his dear wife's bedside to see how she did.[00:25:00]

Then the old woman cried hastily for your life do not draw back the curtains to let the light upon her. She must be kept quiet. So the king went away and never knew that a false queen was lying in the bed. Now, when it was midnight and everyone was asleep, the nurse who was sitting by the cradle in the nursery and watching there alone saw the door open and the true queen come in.

She took the child out of the cradle, laid it at her bosom and fed it. Then she shook out its little pillow, put the child back again and covered it with its coverlet. She did not forget the fawn either. She went to him where he laid in the corner and stroked his back tenderly. Then she went in perfect silence out at the door. And the nurse the next morning asked the watchman if anyone had entered the castle during the night. But they said they had seen no one. And the queen came many nights [00:26:00]after that and never said a word. The nurse saw her every time, but did not dare speak of it to anyone.

After some time had gone by in this manner, the queen seemed to find voice and said one night, "My child, my fawn, twice more I come to see. Twice more I come and then the end must be." The nurse said nothing. But as soon as the queen had disappeared, she went to the king and told him all. The king said, ah heaven, what do I hear? I will myself watch by the child tomorrow night. So at evening he went into the nursery and at midnight the queen appeared and said, "My child, my fawn, once more, I come to see. Once more I come and the the end must be." And she tended to her child as she was accustomed to do before she vanished. The king, not dared speak to her, but he watched her again the following night and [00:27:00] heard her say, "My child, my fawn, this once I come to see. This once I come, and now the end must be." Then the king could contain himself no longer, but rushed toward her saying, you are no other than my dear wife. Then she answered, yes. I am your wife. And in that moment, by the grace of heaven, her life returned to her and she was once more well and strong.

Then she told the king, the snare that the wicked witch and her daughter had laid for her. The king had them both brought to judgment, and sentence was passed upon them. The daughter was sent away into the wood where she was devoured by the wild beast and the witch was burned and ended miserably. And as soon as her body was in ashes, the spell was removed from the fawn and he took human shape again. And then the sister and brother lived happily [00:28:00] together until the end. 

JR: Okay. There you go. Yet another strange kind of disjointed story that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense until you get a framework for the story that's trying to be told.

And this one man is complex. So right away, there doesn't seem to be, or at least it didn't pop out to me, it doesn't seem to be an obvious simple moral layer to it. Did you happen to see one?

David: No. Well, there's a common trope that you see in fairytales in this one, but no, there's not. You don't listen to this one and say, oh, here's the simple moral of the story. If you were reading this to a kid, right, right. Say, okay, what did this mean? And they'd say, oh, okay. Be nice to your friends.

There's nothing like that in this story I think that jumps out at you. 

JR: Yeah. That was the first thing I noticed, red. 

David: So yeah, I would agree with that. 

JR: Yeah. Red writing hood, it was, you know, stay on the path, obey your mother. Right. And then you can get into the deeper understanding of it, but there didn't seem to be just a simple moral lesson that popped out to me.

I just didn't see it. 

David: No. Yeah. I think it's a little [00:29:00] multifaceted. There's a lot of symbolism going on here like we said at the outset, I think. In some sense, I think you and I are still wrestling with an overall pattern, and maybe it'll strike us as we have this conversation here about the fairytale.

JR: Yeah. Well, okay, so right off the bat I also say that I, I had trouble, my trouble with this fairytale is that I had a hard time coming up with the unifying narrative across all three sections of story. Did you run into the same thing, or did you kind of look at it that way? 

David: Yeah. So when you talk about the three sections, you talk about what the brother and sister in the woods, what are the three sections?

JR: First of Well, okay, so yeah, and, and there may be more, but kind of what popped out to me is it's presented in three parts. So you have like the running away, right? The birth mother dies and they have to escape this abusive stepmother. So they run into the wilderness or the woods, and then you kind of, the second section is the call of the hunt, right?

Living in the wilderness and avoiding the hunters. And then the third section, this was the hardest section for me, was [00:30:00] sort of the, what do you call it? The ghost of the queen. Right. The spirit of the sister taking care of both the child Yeah. And the brother. Right? 

David: Yeah. 

JR: And I think it's meant to be seen that way because at the end of each of those sections, there's a phrase that implies that a length of time passes.

Right. It says, after they ran away and the brother gets turned into a fawn or a deer, it says, so they lived a long while in the wilderness alone. Right. So there's this kind of chapter heading right there. Uh, they got away from Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. They got away from the stepmother and they lived in the wilderness a long time.

And then, then after she marries the king, it says they lived together happily for a long while. Right. So there's kind of these clear division between the three sections. And like I said earlier, all three parts had some pretty interesting meanings by themselves, but I had trouble getting a consistent narrative across all three sections.

And I don't know, I was kind of wondering if you would break it down the same way or if, if you had a different take on kind of the narrative arc or if that's the way you saw it. 

David: We'll probably talk about this at the end, but I do think [00:31:00] I've landed on something like this is what happens when you take the brother, right?

The male and the sister, the female, and the curse of the mother seems to be something like, this is what happens when you restrain their growth and keep each of them from being fully what it means to be male and female. Okay. And I know that's a big narrative. No, that's good. But I think that might start to cover everything you hear in the story, right? 

JR: Okay. No, that's good. That's good. I had something, so we'll see if that plays out. Something, something similar. I'll wait for a little bit later, but, no, that's what I was getting at is did you find something that, kind of a nice thread that tied all three sections together, and that's a pretty good one, but we'll get into that here in a little bit.

Yeah, where do you wanna start? Do you just wanna start off with what some of the obvious characters, or do you just wanna start going through the first section? 

David: Well, yeah, we'll start with the first section, but let's start off with the fact that they're orphans and the stepmother beats them every day.

And then it's the, uh, I [00:32:00] think this is the one where they later actually say the stepmother is actually a witch. They actually just say like, yeah. Oh, she was a witch all along. Right. Yeah. But I thought it was interesting because this is, remember the setting now, these are, you know, medieval Europe. Right, right.

And I was thinking, why is it, it's always the stepmother, right? It's always the wicked stepmother. Yeah. And I just wonder if, okay, so I, I wonder if at that time, or maybe you could even say throughout most of history, You know, marriages were a lot out of necessity.

Right? Right. And a lot of women died at childbirth. A lot of men died in battle. And so you had, I think this is true, you had a lot of mixed marrying, right? Yeah. Like, my wife died at childbirth and now I need to find a new wife, not out of love, almost out of necessity. Right?

JR: Right. To raise the children while I'm working the farm, that type of stuff.

David: To raise the children. Yeah. Or vice versa. Yeah. I lost my husband in the war and now I'm left to these two kids and if I'm going to survive, I have to [00:33:00] find another husband. Right. So I just thought it was kind of interesting. I don't know what you think about that idea, but I wonder if so many of these fairytales have a wicked stepmother because of the practicality of that, that there may have actually truly been a lot of blended marriages going on.

And of course, in those days, it's a fight for survival and it very well, you may see the stepchildren as a threat to your own children. You know, today we don't think about that. Right, right. Well, there's lots of blended marriages, there's lot of blended families that Yeah, sure.

JR: Blended marriages today, blended families today. But I think, you know, a hundred years ago, 200 years ago, it was a lot more out of necessity.

The husband had to work the field, the wife had to raise the kids and work the home. The kids were often, as soon as they were of age, they had to work the fields and help put food on the table. I mean, a lot of this stuff was about survival and everybody had to play their role. And so when there was a breakup of the typical family, [00:34:00] then families had to come together and try to fulfill those same roles. Right? So a new mother comes in and, you know, it's not mom, but you know, she still has to raise the kids. She still has to tend the house and around the house. And, there's plenty of work to be done.

So nobody's just sitting back on the couch, you know, watching reruns. everybody's pitching in to do their thing. And so when that breaks up, yeah, it messes, it, it just messes up the whole, pattern of things. And so I think the stepmother, motif is very common because I think right at the beginning it's just a way of saying the typical pattern of this family has been broken.

Either the father's gone, and of course there's no father mentioned. So, we're to assume that the father is gone dead, whatever. Right? Right. Yeah. This family's been, is broken from the very beginning. 

David: Yeah. But it seems to be a typical scenario. But that's where, and I think you always remind me of this, that's where you always have said that the family represents society at large too.[00:35:00]

And so also I think it's important to see when you see the wicked stepmother, to see what the wicked stepmother almost represents like a society that is not working anymore and transformation has to take place. 

JR: Yeah. It's something like that. 

David: And in a fairytale, that's the wicked stepmother. Right? Right. Well, I guess I say all that just to say that, don't read these as, man, what do they got against stepmothers? You know? All these things represent something, and this just happens to be another trope where you have the wicked stepmother who's basically abusing the step kids, right? 

JR: Yeah. So you can always see the wicked stepmother that she sort of represents an oppressive, a twisted, a kind of a broken maternal control, right? And this is in opposition to the fairy godmother, which represents the proper maternal wisdom. And so there are fairytales with fairy godmothers and things like that, that sort of point to the ideal.

But to your point, yes, most of these start off with some [00:36:00] sort of broken situation in a family to represent a broken situation in society. And I think that's kind of that's probably the way to view this is. 

David: Alright, so we have the Wicked stepmother. The brother and the sister say the mother beats them every day. We have hard crust left over. The dog fares better than us. Right, right. And again, I think that's interesting. Like this is a society that's broken, like Right. Needs some kind of transformation. So the brother and the sister say, "come let us go out into the wide world."

JR: Yeah. That ought to be a pretty good right there that this is a, you know what, like you said about the wilderness, right? Let's go out and find something new. The way we're living right now isn't working for us. Let's go out into the dangerous wide world. But at least there's an opportunity of something different. 

David: Right, yeah, exactly. And a couple lines later, it actually says, then they came to the great woods. So we are definitely in the wilderness now. Yeah. We've left the confines of home and we are in the wilderness. Right. And in this case, they feel like they didn't have a choice because the [00:37:00] home structure's completely broken, right?

So whatever's in the wilderness has gotta be better. You know, the dog lives better than we do back at home, so, right. That's what they're doing. They set off. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: Okay. So then, they go into the woods. And this is one that again, I had some trouble with.

The brother says he's thirsty, right? Mm-hmm. Understandably, they're out in the woods. And so he says, the next brook that I find I'm gonna drink, Okay. So they find the stream, and then there's this weird thing, and it happens three times, the sister, and we're not really told how, but the sister hears in the rushing of the stream, a curse kind of, uh, words uttered or something that the stepmother that's now revealed to be a witch had put on the children.

JR: Yeah. She laid a spell on the brooks in the forest it says. 

David: Yeah. So they come to the first one and she hears the voice that says, "he a tiger will be who drinks of me, who drinks of me a tiger will be." I guess the, at least the spirit rhymes really well.

Yeah, that's [00:38:00] right. yeah. So, uh, and so, and then this sister panics and says, dear brother, you can't drink. Okay, so here's my question though. I wrestled with why is it, okay, a couple things. First of all, the brother seems to be thirsty and understandably so, but the sister doesn't ever say that she was really thirsty too.

And then the second one, is it, why is it the sister? Is the one that can hear whatever the spirit of the brook or the curse of the brook and the brother can't hear it. I guess that was the first big question for me. 

JR: Right. I had trouble with that one also, but I've kind of got a theory about this whole thing and maybe I'll just just spill it to see if it holds true.

But it's this kind of, okay. this duality theory that the brother and the sister represent the dual nature of an individual, right? There is no actual brother and actual sister. Both represent sort of different aspects of ourselves, right? And so I told you we were gonna have to jump into some psychology here, right?

Freud, I think is the [00:39:00] one who came up with, right? Freud came up with the id, right? That's that primitive, instinctual, impulsive part of the psyche, right? And then you have the ego. That's the rational, reality oriented part that mediates between the ID and the external world. Right? And then you got the super ego and that's sort of what an internalized, that's like the moral standard.

That's the ideal. And so this story obviously predates Freud, but I think it's wrestling with some of the same ideas that Freud formally outlines. Right? The running away from the stepmother is sort of breaking away from mother and gaining independence. But to your point right here where the brother is the only one that's thirsty, why isn't the sister thirsty?

Well, the brother represents the impulsive, right? And I also think it's a good way. Yes. Yeah. I think that another good way to understand this is that the story seems to start focusing more on the brother, right? So it's almost like it starts the focus on the impulsive idea of the brother.

But as, [00:40:00] as the story progresses, the sister becomes kind of the primary focus, meaning that the impulsive side has been tamed and is less of an obstacle to a mature integration of rationality and meaning into, somebody's life. So that's kind of the way I see that. But starting out in this part, I think the answer to your question is because the brother represents the impulsive side of, of us, and the sister represents a little bit more of the rational side of us.

Do you think that makes sense? 

David: Yeah yeah. Well, I also think you don't have to go all the way up to Freud, I think, to get there because, uh, it's a brother and a sister. Right. And we assume kind of, maybe they're the same age. This is always coming of age. So we know there's some like adolescents, you know?

But I guess along those same lines, then I would also say that, well, look, I mean, girls mature faster than boys, right? Yeah. And so I think in a very practical sense, it's like I could see that he's the one that's impulsive. He's gotta drink, he's thirsty, I wanna drink. I [00:41:00] wanna drink now.

Right? And, and we'll see this progress throughout the story. and I just wonder if it's more like, as they're both growing up and maturing, like she's actually maturing more faster. And so she is kind of tuned into, I don't know, whatever the stream, what the dangers of the stream, the dangers of the spell.

And he's just, you know, a 10-year-old boy out in the woods, he's not paying attention to anything. <Yeah.> That's just the age that he's at. I don't know. Something like that. So maybe a step in between the fairy tale and Freud would be this idea of just natural development.

It's like, yeah, she's already ahead of him just because she's a girl. Right. Something like that. 

JR: The sister's already three steps ahead of the brother, which is Yeah. That typically is the way Yeah. It comes to maturity. You're exactly right. So maybe it is that simple. 

David: Alright. So they come to the first stream. The stream says, whoever drinks a me will become a tiger. And the sister says, no, brother, you can't do that.

Right? So later on, because again, he's thirsty. He wants a drink. He wants a drink [00:42:00] now, right? Mm-hmm. They come to the next stream. This is the progression. And the sister hears, this time it's a wolf. "He a wolf will be who drinks of me, who drinks of me a wolf will be." And the sister again says, brother can't drink control your thirst. We'll find something, we'll find another alternative. You can't do it. And the brother finally says, this is the third one. 'cause things happen in three in fairytales, right? Talked about that last time. Yep. He says, I'm so thirsty. The next brook I come to I'm going to drink of it.

I don't care what happens. Which again, is that impulsiveness, right? Mm-hmm. And so this time the stream says, "Who drinks of me a fawn will be, he a fawn will be who drinks of me." The brother says, I don't care. He takes a drink and as the first drops past his lips, he becomes a fawn. Okay, so let's stop right there.

'cause Yeah, we've seen this progression from tiger to wolf to fawn. Now it's like, which one of these things don't belong? Right, right, right. You have these [00:43:00] fierce animals and then the most, almost the most helpless animal you can think of. So, uh, what are your thoughts on this first progression of the three streams and, uh, you know, why the tiger and the wolf, and then ultimately it's just a fawn?

JR: Yeah. I think, again, kind of to tame that impulsive nature, you know, you start off with a tiger, which is, again, we're in Germany right? Is where these folk tales come from. And so a tiger in Germany Yeah. Is obviously, it's obviously danger, but it's exotic. It's completely unfamiliar to locals in the German woods, right.

it's the unknown monster. Okay. And then it progresses, I would say, down to a wolf, which still a predator, but it's a more typical predator of the European forest. Right? It's dangerous, but it's also possibly tamable, right? Domestication of wolves is how we got dogs.

And so, a seasoned local would probably know how to handle a wolf. The huntsman in Red Riding Hood knew exactly how to handle a wolf, you know? And so [00:44:00] it's kind of, yeah, okay. It's slightly less dangerous and certainly less exotic. And then the final is a fawn, right? A deer, which is a complete prey animal that doesn't fight back.

And so there's no risk at all in taming. So again, to go back to the idea of controlling the impulsive nature. You know, if the brother gives in right of way, right the first stream he comes to, then he'll become this completely savage beast. But since he listens to his sister, since he listens to the rational side at the next stream, he kind of becomes something dangerous, but possibly tamable, right to become the wolf.

But he didn't give into either one of those. And since he was able to hold off till the third time, then he's able to, sort of become a fawn, which is a completely tame animal. And so you can kind of see this predatorial feature shrinking each time the brother heeds his sister's warning. So that plays into my idea of the rational side taming the impulsive side. You know, this sort of lower progression of more [00:45:00] tamable animal every time. At least that's the way I saw it. And it took me several times to kind of come up with that. yeah.

What did you take as, I 

David: guess I had,

yeah. I, I was fascinated by this progression of the tiger, the wolf, and the fawn. And if you look at it as maybe the idea of maturing from boyhood to manhood, right. And for the sister, we'll do the same thing. It's like maturing from girlhood to womanhood. So here's the question I had.

The sister says, with the tiger and the wolf, she says, you can't do this because, in fact, I'm reading it here, said, " Pray dear brother. Do not drink. Or you'll be turned into a wolf and will eat me up." Right, right. She's clearly terrified of what he will turn into. But then he turns into this fawn that's completely tame.

And I guess the question I had is does she just assume that as a tiger and a wolf that he would turn on her? Or might he might have served as her protector? Right. Because I think there's a thread in here that the sister, through no fault of her own, you know, being a good sister, but we'll see it [00:46:00]probably better in the next part.

The sister is almost keeping, how do I say, she's keeping her brother tame, almost overly tame. Right, And, and we'll really see that next time. 

JR: Okay, Well, there was the opportunity to have a wolf, which is tamable, but is also a protector. And I think, so the first time I read this, this is what popped out to me, this idea of she's continually telling him not to what follow his impulses.

And at the end of the day, he becomes a fawn that she just has to take care of for the entire story. You know, that is completely helpless, right? And, and she's what is it be takes on the role of the mother now. She's his mother, she's his protector. She has to constantly make sure he's not leaving the hut that they make that even, even when they move to the castle, he's just frolicking around the courtyard somewhere.

Right? You know, she has to take care of him, the, the rest of the story. And so she plays the role of the mother because she infantilizes [00:47:00] the brother and she kind of, I guess, kind of keeps him held back a little bit.

Well go ahead and go ahead and respond to that. 'cause that really was the first take that you and I both had on this.

David: Yeah, that's right. I guess one thought that I had is I know that, uh, who is, Jordan Peterson talks about this idea that to become what, to become a responsible, mature man, that you have to have a dangerous side of you. But then maturity is being able to control that. Right. Right.

You've heard him talk about that. Sure. Yeah. And I guess I was thinking of that is this is the progression from this boy that will, you know what, he's on the road to becoming a man. And it's like, I like what you actually said. I didn't think about that. Of the tiger is almost this, you can almost think of it as like a mythical beast in the forest because it's not native to German.

German. Yeah. I think that's the way they would've seen it. So yeah. So it's like this mythical beast of the forest, and then it's like a common predator. But then it's like totally helpless and it's like somewhere in there. I feel like, you know, [00:48:00] the curse is that he would've been turned into this, but the potential at least is he could have been a dangerous beast that protected his sister.

I guess I wasn't convinced that he would've turned on his sister. 

JR: Yeah, I wasn't sure about that either. 

David: That's what, that's the thing. I was like, I wonder if the potential was there for him. And so maybe it's that trying to integrate, you know, the dangerous part of him with the more tamable part of him.

But what he ends up being is just like the most helpless creature of the woods. Right? Yeah. You're a fawn and without your mother deer there, it's like you're just food. Yeah, exactly. Basically for the next thing that finds you. Right? 

JR: Yeah. He could have been a formidable protector and, and, and he ended up just being a, basically a pet.

And I think, the key to thinking that way is that it's something like, overly taming the masculine. You know, and suppressing the formidable protector, it goes on and it says that she untied her golden girdle, which [00:49:00] is a great image there and bound it round the fawns neck.

And so it's like this, undergarment that we're going to tie as a, as a, 

David: it's like a collar around the fawn. Yeah. 

JR: Yeah. A collar around the neck of the deer. Right. You know, to kind of control where it goes and Yeah. It becomes a pet. Now you're leading it around by this golden girdle, which is such great imagery of sort of, I don't know, you know, you could really look into it and say, the feminine, controlling the masculine, but again, you could also look at it as, as the rational controlling the irrational or the animal.

You know, you could look at that either way. 

David: Yeah, I do. I, that's one of these images from this story that I, I love that's unmistakable is, here's this fawn, here's the brother, and he's being led around by his sister by her girdle. Like if that's not the most emasculating image. Yeah. Right. If that's not thwarting his path to adulthood.

Yeah. It's such [00:50:00] a, it's such a great image. And I think just to remind everyone, you know, we said at the beginning that focuses on him, but the story's gonna shift to where it focuses on her too. So we're talking a lot about the masculine, but we're gonna talk about her later. Right, okay, so yeah.

So he ends up becoming a fawn. He's led around by his sister, by her golden girdle, and they go deeper into the woods and they come to a little cottage. Okay. So they find a cottage. Now there's one thing, and this is kind of the second act basically now. Right. And there's one thing in here, it jumped out at me again about the fifth time I read that.

It said at night when the sister was tired and she had said her prayers. She laid her head on the fawns back and they, they slept. Mm-hmm. But it points out that she said her prayers. And I wanna point out the same thing I did last time, I believe it was last time, is that it's a subtle way of saying, I think that she's more connected to what the divine, right.

Yeah. Which may indicate that she's, again, a little [00:51:00] more mature. But I also think it's a subtle, it might be that subtle idea of like, how was she able to hear the spirit of the brook? How was she able to discern the curse? Well, she's saying her prayers at night, right?

JR: Oh, okay. That's interesting.

David: So she's got that connection to the divine that it's subtle, but it's again, is the second story we've heard this in now.

JR: Yeah. So she, you're saying she's, uh, offhand reference Yeah. Has a deeper spirituality than the brother.

David: Yeah. And she's able to recognize the curse to begin with when he's just oblivious to it. Right. Okay. So, I don't know, I just throw that out there. I thought it was another little detail. That is the second time we've seen this now. 

JR: No. Yeah. That's interesting. I also thought it was interesting that at the end of this section, when they find the cottage, she says, and if only the brother could have gotten back his own shape again, it would've been a charming life. In other words, they would've, they're still in the wilderness.

But they've gotten away from the wicked stepmother and they're still in this transition place. But she would've been happy there [00:52:00] because obviously they got away from the chaos of their home life. Right. And so, but so they're in the wilderness. Yeah. And if only her brother, you know, it says that she wept for her lost brother earlier on, somewhere in there.

And so it's a recognition that the brother's gone, or at least part of the brother is gone. But yet she clearly has conversations with him later on in the story. It's not like they can't communicate or have a conversation, but she recognizes that part of her brother is lost and that if only he was there, we could have had a nice, charming life in the wilderness in this cottage. 

David: I, yeah, I, that was a interesting sentence too that jumped out at me because I had a little different take on it because it's almost somewhat naive, right? To think that if only my brother were actually human being, right, that he and I could have lived in the forest isolated from society, and we could have had a great little life.

It's like, no, actually your life, is like out there, You know, a job. It's like a family. Yeah. Get [00:53:00] married, marry the prince. Marry the princess, have children. All that's out there, but from her perspective in that moment, it's like, man, we could have had a nice little life if he was just human.

And it could have just been he and I right in this little cottage out in the wilderness. There's something very naive about that, I think. 

JR: Yeah, she escaped a certain set of problems only to pick up another set of problems. Namely living in the wilderness and trying to find your own food and, you know, dealing with what that means.

Right. But, in that initial moment, you know, it's like if you ever camped out in the backyard thinking, man, I could do this all the time, and then by the morning, you know, you get eaten up by mosquitoes and it's hot and you're like, yeah, forget it. At at three in the morning you crawl back into your own bed, right? It's not as interesting as you thought it was gonna be. 

David: Yeah. Usually how that goes is by middle of the night, you're back in your bed and you know, mom comes down the next day and it's like, oh, I thought you guys were gonna camp out. It was hot. Yeah. We were hungry. You know, like the kid, I was thirsty. I couldn't, I had to have a drink right now. 

JR: Yeah. But when you're [00:54:00] busting open, it never lasted. Yeah. The candy bars around the campfire at 10 o'clock at night and you're past your bedtime it, it seems awesome. You're like, this is great. You know, we're making it right. Yeah. So maybe that you, maybe you're right too.

David: This is all I ever need.

JR: Yeah. What else do I need? And so I think you may be right that there may be some naivety about this idea of being able to make it in the wilderness and sort of stopping short of what the ideal life in the castle being you know what I mean? Kind of what you're meant to be.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Okay. So now we pivot to the hunt. And again, there's this line. "So they lived a long while in the wilderness alone." And I don't think that word alone is a mistake. 

David: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

JR: It's almost like, they lived there for a while. They figured out how to what make it in this cottage, but they were certainly alone. And then we kind of find out that the king held a great hunt, and now we have this other section that has this real neat imagery of the blowing of the horn and the huntsman, <Yeah.> sounds this horn through the woods [00:55:00] and it just drives the brother crazy.

He says, I've gotta go out, I've gotta go out and answer the call. Right? And the sister is saying, Nope, don't go out there. Don't leave me. begging him to stay in the cottage. Right? 

David: Right. Yeah, I thought that was interesting because the horn of the hunt does something to the brother. It drives him crazy, he says, I have to go out there and be a part of that. And at first I thought, man, that's weird. First of all, he's a deer. And who does he think they're gonna hunt? Right? They're gonna hunt him.

JR: Right, right. He's the prey here.

David: It's like there's a little bit of like he doesn't fully understand what's going on here. But there's something about that. Okay, so what if the sounding of the horn is almost, that call to what your life could be. So you have the transition where the sister says, we would have a great life. It was just me and him out in the woods, right? <Right.> But the horn is almost that call. It's like waking him up to the potential of the world out there. 

JR: Yeah. Yeah. I think it is. [00:56:00] Something like that. Does that that make sense? No, that's the way it struck me. Yes.

David: Yeah. And so , he starts to go stir crazy. So this idea of just me and sister in the house alone, suddenly he's not that appealing to him anymore. Now he's still stuck as a little fawn, but still it's like I have to go out there and participate in life. It's something like that.

JR: Right. Well, you and I didn't have a sister, but, it's a cute image of the brother saying, I just want to live with my sister and marry her. It's a cute image when you're four, but when you're 15, that's like a problem. Right? And so this, yeah, so this horn is almost like a representation of No, I'm calling out, what the, it's sort of like the call of, I don't wanna keep saying the call of the masculine, 'cause I don't want to couch this in masculine and feminine terms, but that's clearly what's going on. Right?

It's a call for the brother <Yeah.> to embrace manhood, let's say and move on to the next phase. At which the sister, interestingly enough, is trying [00:57:00] to hold him back. In the first section, the sister was the voice of reason, don't drink from the poison stream, right? It was the sister that was trying to kind of, speak some rationality into the situation. But now it's the brother that's like trying to, answer this call of becoming a man and it's a sister now trying to hold him back, right? And I guess that ties into the, kind of goes back to the golden girdle, you know, she's kind of got her grip on him and she doesn't wanna let go because she doesn't wanna be alone. 

David: Yeah. So it's really interesting, this whole idea of the hunt. And I think there's three there. There again, we see the pattern of the three. 'cause this happens three times. And there's something weird about, or there's something I think really in this image of He's the object of the hunt in some sense, but he feels this call to go participate in it. Right?

He has to go and it says he evades them, he's quicker than them. He evades them. He makes it back to the house at night. But then the next morning, the same thing. He hears the horn and he says, I have to [00:58:00] go out there again. And I almost picture, I don't know, I almost picture this little kid, you know how it's like I'm a little kid, but I wanna go play basketball with all the big guys.

JR: Yeah, right.

David: It's almost like, no, you'll get hurt. And it's like, no, but I, you know, just let me go play out there. <Yeah.> It's something like that. It's that kind of image. And the sister, of course is like, you know, are you crazy? They'll, yeah. They'll get you. And he's like, no, I've gotta go participate. You know? 

JR: No, it's, that's interesting because you're right, it's a dangerous game that he's wanting to go play. I mean, he's obviously the object of the hunt. As I was reading it the first time, I was certain that he was gonna get shot, you know, that the king was gonna kill the brother.

That's not what ended up happening. But that's the way, I don't know, that's the way the narrative kind of led me to believe. I was thinking, uhoh, this is not good. He's gonna get hunted and he's gonna get caught. But then I think what's kind of interesting is that it says the king noticed that the fawn had the golden collar.

Right. So it's like they noticed the golden collar and realized, okay, there's something special about this, fawn, this deer. And that's when they [00:59:00] chased him and kind of he led him to the sister's house. Right? Right. 

David: Yeah. Did you make, before we get to that part, did you make anything of, so the second time he goes out, it says, one of them wounded his foot.

And so, he was limping along and going slowly. And then it says, the sister said, oh, you're bleeding. And he said, no, it's no big deal. And by the next day he was fine. Did you know what to do with that detail? 

JR: Um, not really, other than the fact that this is obviously a dangerous game. He got hurt and he still had to go out the next morning.

Little sister let me out. I have to go. Right. You know, I mean again, it's that kind of, that call to manhood where, I want to do something dangerous. I want to go skydiving. I want to free climb this rock face. There's something about it that call, that makes you want to put yourself in a dangerous situation because that's the only time some people feel alive. Maybe it's a way of saying, I'm trying to embrace life in all it has to offer, both the safe side that keeps me [01:00:00] nice and warm in this cottage and the wild side that puts me in harm's way and actually has the potential to, uh, really kill me, right?

You know, and that's sort of that dual nature that we all kind of, maybe we don't feel like we're living life. And it goes back to that idea of order and chaos, right? That, there's order in the camp, but we're called out to the wilderness and chaos so we can learn and expand our understanding of life and learn something new.

I think that's kind of what that's representing there. 

David: Yeah. And just as you were talking, you, me, you mentioned we didn't have sisters, but we did have two other brothers. So there were four boys in our family, and I was. Just occurred to me this idea, the fawn says he hurts his foot. You know, how many times did our mom patch up a skinned knee, right? We fell off our bike, broken tooth, broken arm. You know, it's like it, look, if you have boys, it's all part of it. It's almost the picture I get is that Yeah. Yeah. The sister almost panics and it's like, oh, you skinned your knee. And it's like, oh God, please. You know? It's like the new parent. Oh, he skinned his knee.

You're like, [01:01:00] well, yeah, that's the first of about a hundred. Right? Right. Times you're gonna have to bandage something on this kid, right? So again, it's something, it's the pulling of the safety of the little cabin into the dangerous world. But the world is also where he's supposed to be.

JR: Yeah. 

David: And yeah, he's gonna get scraped up and banged up and that's fine, but the sister is still trying to come to grips with that. Maybe it's something. 

JR: Well, it like that it's why this really feels like a coming of age story in general because that's exactly it. You know, like you said, you've got the new parents that sort of panic over everything.

And I heard someone ask Jordan Peterson one time, what was the most difficult part of being a parent? And he, you know how he pauses and thinks for a second, right?

And his answer was something like knowing when to intervene and help and knowing when to let go. That really is it, I mean, that's the hardest part of being a parent. When do I ignore the scraped knee? Or when do I see the kid falling and crying and saying, ah, you're [01:02:00] okay. Just get up and rub some dirt on it, right? Is that being too harsh? Is that being too, should I be more sympathetic? And there's always kind of that pull of being a parent of how much should I do for this kid? Because I don't want to cripple him by doing something for him that he can do for him or herself.

But at the same time, I don't want to obviously let him go wild and you know, get a call in the middle of the night from the cops, like our parents did. That's a story for another time. You know what I mean? I mean, You just don't know where that balance is, and that's the hard thing. So that's why this really feels like a coming of age story in general. 

David: Yeah. There's a quote in here where the third time the fawn says. She says, I cannot let you go out. And he says, then I shall die here with longing. <Yeah.> And so it's almost this, you know, for her it's like, this is ideal, but for him it's like, well, I'm just gonna curl up and die here then if this is life, if this is all that life has to offer.

Right, right. then that's I guess what I'll do. But the third time then to kind of move the story along the other thing that [01:03:00] occurred to me is so he limps home and that's what enables one of the hunters to follow him. And then that's what ultimately the king says, follow that fawn and see where he is going.

And then the king shows up at the house in the woods, right? 

JR: Right. Yeah. The king says, to his hunters, now follow him all day long until the night comes right. And see that you don't do him any harm. So that, it's kind of this neat idea of he's no longer the hunted anymore. He's not the, I mean, they could have killed him, I guess, but the king is pointing out, no, don't hurt him, but just follow him. And it's because he recognized that golden collar on him. So yes, so they follow him to the house. And so the king comes up and he plays like the brother and he says, little sister, let me in.

And it says the door open. The king went in and there stood a maiden more beautiful than any he had seen before. And so here comes the king, acting like the brother to get let in the house, and now he's standing before the sister. 

David: Yeah. And [01:04:00] there's a couple things in here. So first of all, we talked about the fact, uh, it says their stood made and more beautiful than any had he'd seen before.

So we talked about that idea that beauty in fairytales is like the ideal, right? Right. It means beautiful character. It means, she's becoming, I almost take it as tucked away in the woods, she's actually becoming now the woman she should become, and she doesn't even realize it. She went in the woods, a little girl, and when the king opens the door, now there's this beautiful, like the most beautiful woman he's ever seen.

JR: Oh, that's that. Yeah. That's interesting because in the woods, 

David: So there's that dynamic. 

JR: Yeah. The brother answered his call to be a man, and the sister didn't really answer a call, but in the meantime became a beautiful woman.

David: Yeah. Yeah. Something like that.

JR: Again, that's, the wilderness. Yeah. That's the transformation of the wilderness.

David: Yeah, exactly. Okay. The second thing I wanna point out, that occurred to me, and I just read one of my notes, and I think this is really interesting. It says, [01:05:00] the maiden shrieked out when she saw, instead of the fawn, a man standing there with a gold crown on his head. So I think it's really interesting because it points out that she saw a man.

Okay. With a gold crown on his head. Now what she's been used to is a fawn with a gold girdle around its neck. Yes. And it's almost like the king walks in and she's like, oh my gosh, this is what a man should look like. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. I, I've been, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like this is the proper place for the gold crown.

JR: Yes. Okay. No, that's good. 

David: It should be on his head, not around. Yeah. What do you think of that? 

JR: No, that's good. I was sort of taking it to mean the boy left and then the king came in and took his place. Does that make any sense? Like the little brother is what ran out and then knocked on the door and said, little sister, let me in, but then here's this king.

So it's almost like I kind of took it maybe to mean, the transition of boyhood into [01:06:00] the proper masculine form or something like that. But I like what you said about because, because I don't, that doesn't really hold true throughout the rest of the story, was my problem with that.

But when you said the gold crown on his head as opposed to the gold collar around his neck, I think that's it. I think that's insightful. I think that may be exactly it, that she understood the proper place. So if gold in fairytales represents the highest value, then up until now, the sister's highest value was in controlling her brother, right? Putting the collar around this fawns neck.

Oh, okay. Yeah. And now she sees that, that the highest value actually should be on, to your point, onto the king's head. That's the proper image of manhood or the ultimate value. Yeah. That's really good. I like that.

David: Yeah, and it's no, again, these are little details that it's no mistake that because I thought it was interesting the first couple times I read it is the book said it's a gold girdle. And I'm like, well, that's weird, right? What do you, [01:07:00] and to your point, it's like, why do you take something that's the highest value and use it as like a belt or your underwear, right?

Yeah. Like that, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. But it does make sense if you're trying to draw the contrast to the king with the gold crown. Suddenly, man, I like this, suddenly she sees the proper place of what's most valuable. And maybe she starts to get a glimpse herself of what's out in the world, the potential that's out in the world, just like the brothers going crazy with the horn sounding for the hunt.

Suddenly she sees the potential in the world, and maybe being alone in the cabin in the woods isn't such an attractive thing to her anymore. 

JR: Yeah. No, I like that. Which then it goes, fairy tales always crack me up because the very next line it says, will you go with me to the castle and be my dear wife?

And you're like, wow, that's all it takes, you know? Do we want test this out? Do we want to go on a couple dates? 

David: You're not even going to check her Instagram account or anything like that. 

JR: Yeah. Talk with the parents. 

David: You're just gonna dive [01:08:00] right in.

JR: Yeah, see how this is gonna shape up in the next 25 years. I don't know, it's just funny. But to your point, that beauty represents the ideal, it's a, a way of saying he saw the ideal woman standing before him. And so again, when you read it and you're like, oh, this is happening way too fast, this is absurd.

The absurdity is what's supposed to draw you to the idea that she was the ideal. He had the proper orientation of the most valuable thing. She was ideal. And so the obvious next step is to take her to the castle and to be the wife. 

David: Yeah. 

JR: And then just as quickly as he asks her to be his wife, she says, oh, yes, but the fawn must come too. I could not leave him, right? And so it's this kind of, oh yeah, I gotta hold on to the brother, right? And then of course, the king says he'll remain with you as long as you live. And you know, he'll lack nothing. And the fawn came with him.

Again, trying to kind of keep with this context of coming of age, what did you make about her bringing the brother to the castle with them, because [01:09:00] that's not a normal, when you get married, your first thought is, Hey, can my little brother come live with us, right? Did you, do you think there's anything deeper going on? Yeah. That's a idea. Right? Right. What can go wrong? 

David: No. Well, practically he's still a fawn, right? But I do think she's continuing, her orientation towards him as I do think it continues this whole idea of I still see him as a little boy. Right. I still see him as this little helpless boy that he needs me. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And when maybe the whole point of the hunt is maybe he's starting to mature and grow, you know, into a young man now.

<Right.> But she still almost sees him as the fawn. I guess that's a way to say it, is she still sees him as the fawn. And of course in the fairytale, he's still literally the fawn because he's under the spell. But she very much still sees him that way. 

JR: Yeah. She's holding onto her maternal instinct over him. She still sees herself as a mother figure and caregiver for him. That's kind of what I got outta that also. So [01:10:00] yeah. Off to Act three, act three and the castle. 

David: Yep. We have the royal wedding. She's now queen. And again, one of those things besides the fact that he's a fawn, it feels like this could have been the ending of the story. <Right.> And it's not, there's the whole act three. 

JR: Again, here's that dividing line. You know, it says, and they lived happily together for a long while.

And so here's that chapter heading is the way I see this. Is that okay? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. They lived in the castle for a while. Everything's fine, but then here comes the wicked stepmother again. 

David: Everything's fine except for the brother because he's still a fawn. 

JR: Yeah. I mean, like, she's the queen, you know? That's great. But the brother's still a daggum deer. 

David: Yeah. She's like, she's like, what are you complaining about? I give you fresh hay every night, you know? 

JR: Yeah, exactly. But here comes the wicked stepmother, and this is one of those things that the one element that kept popping up at every section was this wicked stepmother.

So I don't think it's a stretch to say, that the story is fundamentally about some kind of cause and effect relationship between [01:11:00] the stepmother and the lifelong development of the kids. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, just the fact that she Yeah, it does. Keeps coming back.

David: Yeah. Yeah. And, and ultimately, what, spoiler, but they have to kill the witch in order to break the spell and live happily ever after. So it's definitely, she's the arc over all this is the wicked stepmother or the witch and is clearly what her spell that has stunted the growth of both of them on their way to becoming fully functional men and women in society. Something like that. 

JR: Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. It says that in her heart she had no peace because that she found out that the brother and sister are living happily in the castle and it says, her chief thought was how to bring misfortune on them.

Like, this is a sadistic mother, right? You know, like, that's all she can think about. Yeah. Yeah. Is they're out of the house. Whatever. I can't smack 'em around anymore. I can't feed 'em crumbs. And the fact that they made it through the wilderness and didn't get eaten by the beast, [01:12:00] that really, really bothers her.

And all she can think about is how to bring misfortune. You know, it's like, what kind of twisted person is this? Right. Can't sleep at night. Yeah. Right, right. So here we have the introduction of a new character here. Now we have this daughter, so I guess a stepsister to the brother and sister, right? Who it describes as ugly as sin. Yeah. Which is great. It was, yeah. It says she's ugly as sin and had only one eye, right?

And so this is the first time we're hearing about this, but her first words in this story is that she complains to her mom and says, I never had the chance of being queen. Which is a, it's kind of a weird thing, you know, because I'm assuming there's lots of women in the kingdom that didn't have a chance to be queen. Right? 

David: Yeah. I mean, that's right. these one or two sentences right here actually reveal a lot of why the mother is so malevolent, why she wishes such ill will, right? <Right.> Because I think we have a couple things. First of all, she has a daughter of her own and her daughter, she's ugly as sin.

I wanna get to that in a minute. And she's complaining, I never had a chance to be queen. [01:13:00]So what is the whole orientation of the stepmother? It's resentment, right? Yeah. I want what others have. Right? How come they have what my daughter doesn't have? And that to me becomes the whole motivation now, that's revealed behind why this, witch slash stepmother has acted the way she's acted. Right. It's all out of resentment. 

JR: Yeah, and just that line, I never had the chance to be queen from the daughter, right? That's a statement of the world is unfair, right? Or the fates are against me, right? It's a way of thinking that the story is trying to capture there.

Just with that one little line, because again, it's absurd. There's lots of women that weren't queen. Why would you let that bother you so bad? But it's this idea that the world is unfair. In psychology, it's the internal versus the external locus of control. Have you heard this? that, if you have an 

David: uh, no, you have to remind me. 

JR: Yeah. Well, that you have an internal locus of control, you see how you interact with the world as under your control. If [01:14:00] something bad befalls you, well, that's, I could have done something different. I could have changed it. The external locus of control basically says I have no control over my life and whether I succeed or fail, it's just the luck of the draw. Right. And so the daughter's idea of I never had the chance to be queen, is sort of this, the world is against me type of statement.

I don't know. It plays to the idea of the external locus of control. I have no control over my life. Yeah. It happens to me. 

David: Well, okay, so she says, I never had a chance to be queen. And, we both were like, well, yeah, lots of people didn't.

But again, it's a fairy tale. This idea of king and queen, I think it's an ideal that's held out to everyone. You can be king of your own castle, right? Yeah. You can be queen of your own house, right? And so there is that idea. It's not just like, well, look, there was maybe a dozen queens in Europe that time. Who knows? But I think it's a deeper idea of to grow up, to mature, to find a spouse, to have [01:15:00] children, you are effectively, you have become queen, right? Yeah. You have a good life, right? It's something like that. So I think it's actually, it occurred to me saying something deeper.

She's not just saying, I never had a chance to rule over a large kingdom. Right. She's actually saying I've never had a chance to mature and have a family of my own. Yeah. I've, which ties back to this. idea that, I hate to say that, but again, it's fairytale. it says she was ugly as sin. Now that's not just a comment on her physical looks.

JR: Right, right. Well, no more than the maiden being beautiful. That's not simply saying Right. That man, she was hot. It's saying that she was ideal. And so if you're ugly as sin, then you are the exact opposite of the ideal. 

David: Yeah, exactly. You basically, look, it says as sin for a reason.

Right. You basically have, here's someone who has nothing to offer the world. Right? Yeah. And in a fairytale, in a simple story, how do you say that? You say that person was ugly as sin. We don't say that today, nor should [01:16:00] you, but Right. That's what this is representing. Here's a person who has nothing to offer the world, and because of it, she has no family, right? She's probably been stunted, maturity wise herself, because that's the way her mother operates. And so that's why she utters this statement that I've never had a chance to be queen. Yeah. And one other thing I'd be remiss if I didn't point this out, 'cause it jumped out at me after reading this several times.

Why does it says she was ugly sin. She had only one eye. Right. Oh, okay. That's really interesting. Right? Yeah. Yeah. 'cause we talked about one eye. Yeah. One eye sees the world, one way. Right. They're the ideologue and they can't see anything else. 

JR: Yeah. 

David: And again, it's no mistake that here's another fairy tale with a person with one eye. <Right.> I got excited when that jumped off the page at me, I was like, oh, wow. No, I did too. 

JR: Yeah. It's that singular focus with no nuance, right? I'm not the queen because the world is against me. That's like a completely un [01:17:00] nuanced, assessment of the situation. And I think it's interesting that you'll notice that it can't be fixed by the witch's magic.

Did you catch that? It's like the witch casts a spell and makes her look like the queen, but it says she could not fix the eye, I mean, you know, if you've got this magic that can make you look like someone else, surely we can, make a little cosmetic eye there, right? With that same magic. But the witch's magic can't fix that. Right? You can't fix the way she views the world.

David: Which tells you that's the way she's views the world. That can't be fixed. Right? It has nothing to do with, physically missing an eye. 

JR: Well, it also go back a couple episodes where we said, As a parent, prepare your child for the road. Don't prepare the road for your child, right? Well, this is a perfect example of the witch, the stepmother preparing the road for her child. So she doesn't actually do anything to change the way the stepdaughter views things. She doesn't fix the one eye. All she does is this cosmetic thing to make her look like a queen, [01:18:00] instead of dealing with the fundamental problem, which is she views the world in this un nuanced, singular, laser focused way, the world's against me. And she never addresses that. It's almost like she just gets out in front of it and says, don't worry. I'll make this better.

I can make you queen. And so she is, I can fix this queen. Yeah. And, and so she assumes the role of this queen without any knowledge, right? So she wants the title without any of the effort. And so, to continue with the story, all she can do is lie in bed on one side, right? Which doesn't sound like a win to me, you know? <Yeah. Yeah.> You know, you just have to lay in bed and only lay on one side so the king doesn't see your missing eye, right? And so it's this, I mean, that sounds miserable. But it's a title only, there's virtually no interaction with the king. There's no indication that she does anything queenly.

Right. You know, she doesn't interact with the kingdom at all, right? She just lays in bed on one side to hide the fact that she is missing an eye. So I just think that's a great image. 

David: And to take it one step further, it's the same thing [01:19:00] as the tree with silver leaves and golden apples in the previous fairy tale.

<Oh, yeah.> It's wisdom in the hands of fools. Yeah. Watch them fumble it away. Yeah. Right. So she has the appearance of being a queen, but like you said, all she can do is lay there. There's nothing she can do with it, right? Because you placed wisdom in the hands of a foolish person.

JR: Yeah. So you're stuck in the bed.

David: Of an ideologue. Right. And, and so there's literally nothing they can do. Right. Yeah. I Great. Gonna f away think That's Alright. So let's. Back up for a second and then wrap all this up because let's talk about how one eye actually gets in the castle in the first place.

So really quick, the queen, the real queen has a baby, right? Mm-hmm. And the king was out hunting, and the witch sees this as an opportunity to swap her daughter with the queen. So, the witch takes the form of a chamber made and, makes her daughter the queen, and they tell the real queen to go into the bathroom.

And it's really weird. They make this great [01:20:00] fire. So she's suffocates almost, right? And she's really weak. And you almost get this picture that she's almost like a shadow of herself walking around. So now you have the queen's swapped. Mm-hmm. And the real queen only comes out at night. And like we said, one eye queen, all she can do is lay in the bed because if she does anything else, she will reveal the fact that she only has one eye.

JR: Mm-hmm. 

David: Okay. Right. And so then as the story resolves, another person sees the real queen, kind of this shadow of herself. It's really odd going in and nursing the child every night. And then we have the same step of three. The first night she says something like, two more times I'll come and then I have to go.

Mm-hmm. And then she comes again and says, I'll come one more night and then I'm gonna be gone. And then you get the idea that she's, she thinks this is all ending. Right? Right. She's gonna die. She's not gonna make it. But the third [01:21:00] time the king catches word that this strange woman is going in and nursing the child every night.

So the king hides. And he actually sees her and he understands that this is the real queen. Right. Not the imposter lying in bed all day. Right, right. Yeah. All right. So I know that was really fast and there was a lot there. 

JR: This was the hardest act for me, right. The sister is suffocated by the wicked witch, but her spirit, what still comes at night to tend the baby and the brother, the fawn, right? And it was the hardest for me to kind of, yeah, that's right. Wrap my head around what this meant because it's clearly, I mean, the fact that the sister is suffocated by the malevolence of the witch. I think that's a interesting image. That whatever the witch did all the way back at the beginning still has a grip on the sister. And it suffocates her as a mother. It's almost like, what happened to her as a child affected her as a mother.

And you see this in real life, you know, unfortunate victims of [01:22:00] abuse, things like that. They have trouble adjusting to a normal relationship, normal marriage, motherhood, fatherhood, right? And, and I don't know, it's like that malevolent hand reaches out from the past and continues to suffocate them.

At least that's the way I saw the kind of the bathroom scene, you know, where, she's suffocated by the wicked witch, you know, she turns up the fire and it doesn't really say she dies. I mean, that's the implication. But, at the very least, she is out of sight, and all that's left is her spirit.

David: Yes. It's implied that she's almost kind of this weak shadow of her former self. Maybe in kind of turning her stepsister into the queen, maybe there's something about like, she's no longer even recognizable. So she's like, right, well now if I go into the king, he's gonna throw me out because I just look like this haggard, worn out, sickly person and not the queen.

It was odd. It was hard to know what to make of, you know, building the fire under the tub and <Right.> yeah, there's a [01:23:00] lot going on. 

JR: There's something about the ghost of her showing up, cause at midnight every night the maternal spirit of the sister, right? Arrives and continues to care for the baby, and the dear and the brother, right? If the ugly stepsister was just trying to assume the role of the queen without any of the knowledge or responsibility, then the sister is all the responsibility without the corresponding title.

David: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. 

JR: Yeah. And it shows that the real queen was always more interested in caring for her people than for the display of living in the castle as a figurehead, which is what the ugly stepsister wanted. Right. That's all she wanted. It was to be the figurehead. 

David: Yeah.

JR: And so it's this juxtaposition of these two ideas is the way I kind of viewed that. 

David: Well, it's really, so this, I just noticed this. What is the thing that triggers the king to recognize her is he watches her that last night and he heard her say, "My child, my fawn this once I come to see, this once I come and now the end must be."

[01:24:00] And then it says the king could not contain himself any longer 'cause he rushed towards her saying, you are no other than my dear wife. And it's like, okay, what's the thing that triggered him to recognize her as his real wife? It's her care for the fawn.

JR: Yeah. It's the inner beauty.

David: So it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting that, so this care for the Fawn that almost has like, I use the term again, like Infantalized. Mm-hmm. Her brother. But it also ends up being the thing that triggers- the king says this has to be my wife. Yeah. Not the good for nothing laying around in the bed. Like that's the care, the inner beauty, right?

Yeah. This is the only person that cares for this stupid deer that's running around my castle every day. 

JR: Yeah. That I can't get rid of, right? It has echoes of <That's right.> of, of Solomon, right? The story about the two women that were arguing over the baby.

David: Yeah, that's right.

JR: And it's sort of like Solomon says, well, let's cut 'em in half.

Well then the real mother is the one who steps forward [01:25:00] and says, absolutely not. It's her child. cause she would rather see the child be given to somebody else then obviously to, be murdered. And so there's a little bit of those echoes there. I like that, that's neat.

David: Uh, yeah. So it's that inner beauty that he actually sees. Yeah. And that's captured. And again, and laying eyes on her and saying he saw the most beautiful maiden he's ever see again. That connection to the divine, the inner beauty, everything about her and that's what he recognizes as opposed to the one eye laying in the bed every day.

Yeah. Doing nothing. To your point, for the people in the kingdom, like she's not doing anything right. 

JR: Right. Yeah. 

David: Yeah. That's really interesting. 

JR: Yeah. So at the end of the story, it kind of looks like despite the messed up upbringing of the wicked stepmother, the sister kind of overcomes the struggles of childhood and adolescence and rose to become the ideal woman.

That's what the queen represents, right? And so her concerns, yeah. Yeah. Her concern is for others, not her title, which is why only she can [01:26:00] properly wear the crown. So there's that crown image again. It's almost like she saw the ideal in the king, that she saw the proper place for the crown and she learned the proper orientation for herself as a queen. It wasn't the figurehead, it wasn't living in this lavish castle. It was caring for the people that needed caring for, her child, her brother. And again, this represents society, so the weak, the people that can't defend themselves, right?

That's what the queen represents. And now she properly wears the crown to kind of bring this to full circle. 

David: Yeah. I guess it, does start to all tie together and make sense. And here, let me read the very last part and then we can kind of get overall thoughts. So the king figures out what's going on. He brings the wicked stepmother and the daughter to judgment. And it's interesting 'cause he says the daughter was sent away to the woods where she was devoured by wild beast. Now it's interesting because that's what her mother wanted. <Yeah.> For the brother and the sister.

JR: Intended for the other kids. Right.

David: Yeah. So it's [01:27:00] that thing if it's like, you know, be careful what you wish for. So Right. The stepdaughter was sent out, she's devoured in the woods and it says the witch was burned because I guess that's what you do with witches.

JR: Absolutely.

David: You burn them, right? Yeah. But then it's almost like the very last sentence said, as soon as her body was in ashes, the spell was removed from the fawn and he becomes the brother again. <Right.> The brother's finally not this stupid deer anymore, right? It's the very end. But the spell is broken. And now the sister and the brother lived happily ever after in the castle. Yeah. Until the end, right? 

JR: Yeah. Yeah. So that very end thing that's like, I get that they burn the witch 'cause that's what you do. But there's something about the death of the wicked stepmother that brings the brother back, I don't know.

I wrestle with that because I still, I want to go back to this I idea about the brother and sister representing the rational and the primitive, instinctual, impulsive part of us. Right? And [01:28:00] so once that wicked stepmother's grip is gone. Once they've understood the proper orientation of the way to live a full life, to rise up to their higher calling. Then everything goes back to normal. It's almost like, now the brother can properly be the brother, the sister can properly be the sister. That's where I really got that idea that those are two separate parts of the same person.

You know, that whole idea of the instinctual part and the rational part. That's where I kind of got that. Yeah. Yeah. Because now they kind of come together into a fully integrated person at the end. I don't know.

David: Yeah. I still go back to this idea that somehow the spell was to thwart the development of both of them toward adulthood. And you could see it easily in the brother to begin with. Because he's turned into this helpless fawn, right? Led around by his sister. <Yeah.>

I think you can see it in the sister in that, what is the witch try to take from her. Well, [01:29:00] she tries to take her queen hood, right? She tries to take her child. She, you know, shows she strips her of everything that it meant to be the ideal woman basically, right? Mm-hmm. She strips her of all that. And so somehow I think, this is a story about, and look, I think you said it like childhood trauma can thwart your maturity toward adulthood.

JR: Yeah.

David: And so it's something like that. The spell is the trauma that she inflicted on these stepchildren, but it hit 'em in different ways. So at the beginning, she's just thinking it's simple, right? I'm gonna send 'em into the woods and they're gonna get eaten. Mm-hmm. Which, that's what happens to her own daughter.

Yeah. But it hits 'em different ways because they're different kinds of personalities, right? So, I don't know, that's the closest I've come to tying it all together, I guess. 

JR: Okay. So you kind of look at it as a cause and effect theory, right? That you see how the story of how the lack of proper mother figure hurts boys and girls [01:30:00] in different ways, right? Something like that.

David: Yeah. You could say that.

JR: Yeah. So the first section implies that in early development, boys are gonna have trouble controlling their animal impulses or something like that. And that girls are gonna have trouble understanding or at least trying to control the impulses of their male counterparts.

Something like that. So you're following it through saying that childhood trauma affects us in different ways and you follow the story of the brother and the sister out that way? I think that maybe it also, you know, I mean, like we've said at the beginning, there's more than one way to view these things and that's why a well-crafted story, uh, I just love it because it can be seen so many different ways. It's two different theories on how to view this and both of them kind of work. Both of 'em also have the limitation of saying it just doesn't fit perfectly.

I just don't get that Lego click when I pop either one of those ideas in. You know what I mean? Maybe there's a better theory out there. I'd love to hear somebody else's a unifying theory that goes through this entire story and ties the entire narrative together. I don't [01:31:00] know. 

David: Yeah. At different layers, both of these things could be true. I also think this is one where I could read this six months from now and get something, <Yeah.> not completely different, but you know, something completely different could jump out at you and go, oh, yeah, okay. This might be the unifying pattern that ties all this together, because there's a lot going on in this one.

JR: Oh, yeah. Even if you don't have the unifying pattern, this is a great story because this is one of those things where so many of the details, whether it's the tiger, the wolf, and the fawn, whether it's the golden girdle, whether it's the suffocating fire, you know, the wilderness.

All these things are gonna pop in your head. This is why I laid up at two in the morning, by the way, is so many of these little images were popping in my head and we're starting to kind of coalesce and make sense. But even if they don't, like I said, you don't have a grand unifying narrative. You at least have these really cool images. It's a great story for how to see, in the symbolic way, the way that [01:32:00] symbolic thinking is helpful in analyzing a story.

You know, and that's what kind of why we dig into all these fairytales. 

David: Yeah. Yeah. All the little details. Once you get the symbolism down, these little details jump out at you and you realize, and by the way, I was just reading a book that is basically saying the same thing about the Bible. It's like once you get the narrative down, it's like every little detail is there for a reason.

<Right.> And we've said this before, you know, like if there's a little detail in a story, especially in the Old Testament, that you're like, well, I don't even know what that means. It's like, man, pick at that for a while. 'cause there's some gold there. Yeah, there's some gold there. 

JR: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So there you go man. That was just like most of our conversations, they actually kind of lead me to a clearer understanding. And I know more about it. I know it's easy to probably hear this and think that we've got all this kind of laid out and trust me, we do not have, we have notes, but we don't have outlines. 

<No.> You know what I mean? This is a very organic conversation. And so at the end of it, I'm always kind of blown away. [01:33:00] So what we would love is to have your opinion on it, because again, I don't think, I just wanted that nice puzzle piece click that ties it all together.

And maybe we didn't completely get there, but I guarantee you one of our listeners could help us out and kind of make that a little bit more clearer narrative maybe. I don't know. That's the thought at least. 

David: Yeah, it always amazes me that I think I've got it figured out and then we actually hit record and then all these other things start falling into place too.

And so, yeah, it's always fun. And next episode, we are going to do, this is gonna be a good one. It's The Nix of the Mill-Pond. 

JR: Oh, yeah. I think this is my favorite one. This is one where the puzzle piece really does click in, in a very satisfying way once you understand it.

Yeah. Uh, I, yeah, I'm looking forward to this. 

David: Yeah. The Nix of the Millpond, if you wanna read ahead, you can go ahead and Google it.

JR: Yeah. Do your homework.

David: Should be out there. By the way, a nix is like a water spirit. Okay. So yeah, I didn't know what that was into that next episode. 

JR: Had to check [01:34:00] that out. I can't wait. That'll be a good episode. 

David: Yeah. And if you are enjoying these conversations and you have friends that you think would like it, please pass this podcast on to other people, specifically this series. 'cause a little different than what we normally do, but tell your friends, like, subscribe, and we would love to hear from you.

And we will talk to you next time when we discuss The Nix of the Millpond.

JR: Alright, we'll see you.