Gore is Good
I love to share fairy tales with my classes, which means that all of my students are exposed to the original versions of stories like “Jack the Giant-Killer” and “The White Cat.”
Illustration from “The White Cat” in Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book. Illustration by Henry Justice Ford.
If you are unfamiliar with these stories, here is some context: “Jack the Giant-Killer” is about a little boy who tricks and kills enormous, blood-thirsty giants. “The White Cat” is about a white cat who is actually a princess, and a prince must cut her head off in order to reveal her true form.
I can imagine a parent being hesitant to get excited about their children reading about such violence. In fact, I recently had a parent come to me after I assigned some at-home reading from “The White Cat” and ask in a horrified tone, “Was there really a decapitated cat in last night’s reading?”
If I were to see a child displaying any sort of violent tendencies after reading these fairy tales, let me assure you that I would take that very seriously. However, this has not been my experience, and I assert that it is a good thing to expose your children to controlled doses of violence while they are young.
When a child is sheltered from violence, it can become mysterious and alluring. I have had students whose parents are very sensitive to violence, so before coming to my classes they have very little exposure to it. These students are usually the most fascinated with the violent aspects of the fairy tales I have shared with them. Because of this fascination, these students generally gain less value from the fairy tales we study. During discussion, these students are overly focused on reiterating the violence because it is so unfamiliar and mysterious to them that they must try to make sense of it.
Conversely, my students who have not been sheltered from violence enjoy all aspects of these stories immensely—both tales convey a sense of justice that appeals to children, and other very psychologically valuable themes for children to be exposed to. They enjoy these stories for reasons other than the small violent incidents.
It is possible to go too far. “Bluebeard”-type stories, for instance, are a type of story that I will never share with my students. Lewis Carroll once said that a fairy tale is a “love gift” to a child— fairy tales can provide a child with hope for the future and the promise of a happy ending, which is a beautiful thing to give a child. “Bluebeard” stories, however, couldn’t be further from a “love gift.” “Bluebeard” stories are about a man who kills all of his wives, chops up their bodies, and hides the body parts away in a special place. These stories are too scary, and I would never share them with a young child.
Generally speaking, if a story is a little gory but doesn’t go into a ton of gruesome detail, it’s fine. Oftentimes what happens with adults is that they read a story from their own context and life experience, and they ascribe more darkness to that story than a child ever would. An adult might worry that this violence will disturb and contaminate their child, when in reality, they hardly notice it.
Whether we like it or not, violence exists. It is a real part of this world, and your children will eventually see it. By exposing them to it in safe ways at an early age (e.g., through stories), you are helping them to cope when they inevitably encounter it in real life. It will destroy an immune system to keep someone in a highly-sanitized space, and ensure that they will get sick immediately upon encountering a single foreign germ. Similarly, it can hamper a child’s ability to function normally in this world if their early environment is cleansed of all possible darkness. The question a parent faces when deciding what to expose their children to should not be, “How do I make my child’s world perfect?” Instead, parents should ask, “How do I make my child strong?”
Early exposure to small amounts of gore and violence is good for the development of a child. By bubble-wrapping our children and refusing to expose them to any amount of darkness, we are doing them a disservice. We are not preparing them for the world—we are preparing them for a quarantined bubble, and we are making them weak. By exposing children to small, controlled amounts of gore and violence, they will be able to encounter worldly germs without falling ill as a result.
Further reading:
The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim is a children’s psychologist with a lot to say about the psychological value of fairy tales. I especially adore the forward of this book.
Special thanks to James Emmi for his help with editing this post.