Comparison Essay
The differences of Snow White in Disney’s animation and Grimms Märchen(格林童話)
Do you like fairy tales? When we were little, fairy tales played an important role in our childhood. The Disney company uses these stories to create a lot of wonderful animations. But some of the stories are not for children to read at first.
“Snow White” in Grimms Märchen is one of the examples. In order to let children watch the animation, the plots might have some differences between Disney’s animation and Grimms Märchen which Brothers Grimm publish in 1812.
The first difference is the queen’s identity. In Disney’s animation, the queen’s identity is Snow White’s stepmother who is jealous of Snow White’s beauty.
But in Grimms Märchen, the queen is not Snow White’s stepmother. Instead, she is Snow White’s biological mother who is afraid that Snow White will steal the love of her husband.
In order to prevent children will think that their mother will kill them. Thus, Disney let the queen become stepmother, not the biological mother in the original book.
The next difference is the ways that the queen murdered Snow White. In Disney’s animation, the queen useed a poisoned apple to murder Snow White.
But in the original book, except for a poisoned apple, there are two more ways that the queen used to murder Snow White. In Grimms Märchen, the queen uses a ribbon to tie on Snow White’s waist to kill her, but it fails because the seven dwarfs come back and lose the ribbon.
Then the queen used a comb which has poison on it. After Snow White used the comb that the queen gave her, Snow White got poison. But this way also failed because the seven dwarfs helped Snow White take down the comb on her hair.
Last, the queen gave Snow White a poisoned apple. After Snow White takes a bite of the apple, she died.
In Disney’s animation, the queen uses the poison apple to murder Snow White, but in the original book, the queen but also uses the ribbon and the comb to murder Snow White.
The last difference is the way queen died. In Disney’s animation, the queen died because she tried to escape from the seven dwarfs and the animal’s chasing when she stood on the edge of the cliff, lighting bolt fell down and the queen fell into the cliff and died.
In the original book, when the queen attended Snow White and the prince’s wedding ceremony, Snow White forced the queen to wear a pair of iron shoes that burned in red and forced her to dance until she died.
The way that the queen died in the original book is to cruelly to let children watch. Therefore, Disney chose to let the queen die because of falling into the cliff accidentally.
Comparing the story of Snow White in Disney and the original book, we can find that Disney made a lot of changes to let children see the movie. For example, the queen becomes the stepmother not the biological mother of Snow White; the queen only uses one way not three ways to murder Snow White, and the way queen died change into falling into the cliff from wearing the iron shoes that burned in red and dancing to death. In my opinion, although Disney created an animation that is totally different from the original story, it is necessary to make some changes to protect children from the plots that are unsuitable for them.