In the evening, I often watch a drama on TV. Yesterday it was Law & Order–not for the violence. No. I watched it, because I knew that by the end of the hour, the mystery of who committed the crime would be solved. They would be caught and found guilty and Justice would be served. There’s something comforting about that.
The same thing happens in other crime dramas I watch: FBI, Elsbeth, and the new Matlock with Kathy Bates. I sit down knowing that justice will win out by the end of the hour.
When I was a child, I was exposed to lots of fairy tales. Thus I learned that stories should end with a problem being solved and justice being served or a kiss and a wedding. Often with both.
Some examples of fairy tale endings:
Snow White
She marries the handsome prince, but only after the evil queen falls off a cliff, is crushed by a rock, and her body is eaten by vultures. (Disney version. The original fairy tale version is even more gruesome.)
Hansel & Gretel
The evil witch with a house made of cakes and cookies (children) is pushed into her own oven by Hansel and burned to death. Furthermore, the stepmother who sent the children into the woods dies before they return to their happy father.
Rapunzel
The witch who kept Rapunzel in the tower falls to her death from the tower window and disintegrates into dust when she hits the ground. And … Rapunzel marries the handsome prince.
Of course, life is not a fairy tale. But even in life, we still expect justice.
Some examples from history:
John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. He was shot and killed after a twelve-day chase.
Lee Harvey Oswald. He was shot by Jack Ruby two days after he assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
Osama bin Laden. It took almost ten years, but finally he was caught and killed.
None of these were Law & Order endings. But at least you could say that in the end the wrongdoers faced justice.
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No matter what happens now in this unusual and difficult time, we’re still expecting that justice will be served, eventually. We can’t help it. Our stories, fictional and real, always end that way. Don’t they?
Interesting that “forgiveness” is rarely a feature of fairy stories…
Fairy tales are awfully violent, aren’t they. I think they’re too basic to get into the more nuanced kind of story that would involve forgiveness. They’re dealing about real danger that’s out there in the world. (A witch who eats children, an evil stepmother who sends Snow White away and then sends the huntsman out to kill her and cut out her heart) And the child needs to believe they can be saved, one way or another. I suppose we all are attracted now and then to a simple story that convinces us that good can prevail.
Hear, hear. I like your reasoning and examples. Justice is what this world needs if we’re ever to get along with each other.
Love, bravery, and hard work inside a framework of justice and cooperation. Anyway, we do need justice.
Any lack of justice is a soul death to those harmed. but yes, Fingers, legs, and toes are crossed for justice to be served in our country, but sadly, sometimes it is not, and we must find our way through that darkness. And we will.
You write about finding our way through the darkness. The symbolism of a dark woods often appears in fairy tales. Here in Washington, we can easily imagine a large dark, dense forest. If you get lost there, it may take a long time to find your way out. You may have the help of a search team, or you may have to do it all on your own.
But like the lost hiker, we trust we’ll find our way out.
This is so true Nicki. Whenever I feel anxiety build up and start to overwhelm, I turn to mysteries, who-dun-its and the like, as they allow me to believe right will overcome wrong, and all will be well once more.
Anxiety is a new bedmate for me, although I’ve lived with depression for a long while. I’ll admit, it’s only now I feel it, that I understand quite how debilitating it is. I am truly grateful for the seemingly unending supply of those books/TV shows/films to turn to.
Romances also have happy endings. But when we come up against the world’s injustices, the who-dun-its are what we need.
I had anxiety attacks for a few months, and the cause was really weird. I was in the Philippines, and my parents were in the US. One evening suddenly for no reason, I was scared, feeling that I was about to die. The anxiety stayed with me for a couple of months. Then I received a letter from my mom saying that Dad had lung cancer. He had known about it since the day I had my first anxiety attack. The anxiety stayed with me until the day he died, and in a moment it disappeared.
My dad was not a big talker. He came from a family of all boys. Although he was always there for my sister and me, he was somewhat quiet about it. I always felt close to him though. Maybe we had some kind of spiritual bond. If I shared some of his anxiety about having cancer, I’m glad.
I like stories with happy endings precisely because so many real life stories do not have happy endings.
Happy fictional stories can balance out disheartening real life stories. Sometimes, anyway.
In the 70’s, as a newly minted teen-ager, I believed in The Age of Aquarius, Harmony, Understanding, Sympathy, Trust Abounding. If the age of Aquarius is still dawning, great. If it’s not, I’d say it fizzled out before fruition, without realizing it’s promised potential.
I still love that song. My husband (then boyfriend) took me to see Hair, the musical. I knew to expect the nudity. What surprised me was the hair. And I still believe in “harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding,” but I’m old enough to know that they’re only some ingredients in a complex world. And in the real world, even though happy endings are there, they often take a long time to arrive and they’re mixed in with a lot of other stuff.
Justice is rarely served to the rich, white, and male. Sad, indeed.
I’m holding out for it. If we can keep our country together, justice may eventually catch up with many of the rich, white, male criminals.
sometimes I am terribly frustrated by Disney endings…the Little Mermaid died at the end of Anderson’s tale…I told my two god daughters that and they told me to mind my own business from now on…fairy tales and stories have a message…if the message is always that everything will be okay, what’s the point…I ended a story once with: not everyone gets a happy ending…and mycritique group gave me a group booing…which was not a happy ending to that session…
After I wrote this, I thought I should go back over some of my short stories. I think many of them end not with a happy ending but with the sense that something has been resolved or soon will be for the protagonist. Short stories are hard. They’re certainly not fairy tales. Even the latest Law & Order, has a mixed ending. The criminal was caught and punished, but we were left up in the air about the cop who testified against him and how she would be treated by her fellow policemen now.
We know that not everyone gets a happy ending, but we still keep hoping.
Fingers crossed for justice.
Yes. Even if we have to wait awhile.
I love fairy tales for the reason you mentioned–things coming out right in the end. 😊😊😊 One of my favorites is Cinderella.
I watched Law & Order for years and enjoyed the satisfying endings of the “ripped from today’s headlines” stories. I think we all crave justice.
I think of Cinderella as being the quintessential fairy tale.
Shakespeare wrote tragedies. But (and I’m no expert) even though they didn’t have happy endings, didn’t they leave you with a sense of justice being served?