ONCE UPON A TIME

Once upon a time long, long ago, someone told a story while sitting around a fire. Of course, we have no idea exactly when story telling began or who that first story teller was. It doesn’t matter who the storyteller was, or who all the forgotten storytellers who followed were, it was an attempt to make sense of the world.

The beginning stories - myths, folktales and fairy tales - usually had elements of magic like dragons, wizards, witches, talking animals or magic objects like magic mirrors, a magic ring and even beans as in Jack and the Beanstalk. The number three was often important in these stories, too, like in The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Wishes and The Three Billygoats Gruff to name a few. The number three carries on with three main characters; victim, villain and the hero who goes on a quest to save the victim or thwart the bad guy and often has to fulfill three challenges to reach his goal. The only heroine I can think of offhand in those early tales was Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, who killed the evil witch and saved Hansel.  

Over the years, the stories have been altered and changed, but many still followed the same motif of good conquering evil with a happy ending, as in The Chronicles of Narnia and The Harry Potter series. This is not as true with more modern literary works, but it still holds true with most mysteries, albeit with an absence of magic except in some paranormal mysteries.

 

Some authors have picked up on the fairy tale theme and altered them like Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and others written from the point of view of one of the characters from a fairy tale. The same was done even earlier with children’s books like The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! By A. Wolf as told to Jon Scieszka. One of my favorite children’s picture books was An Undone Fairy Tale by Ian Lendler in which the princess locked in the tower by her wicked step-father in the end rescues Sir Wilbur, who comes to rescue her. It’s a delightfully funny tale immensely enjoyed by all the classes I’ve read it to both in my own classes and in the many classes I substituted for later.

Because we live in a world often filled with violence, dishonesty and unfairness, we still hope for the happy ever after ending portrayed in many fairy tales even though deep in our minds, we know it can’t always be that way. Of course, some fairy tales are cautionary tales like The Fisherman and His Wife or The Emperor’s New Clothes, but most mysteries, other than noir, and especially in cozies, do follow the fairy tale motif ending of: “and they lived happily ever after.” Although it’s rarely the same joyful tripping down the path of happiness we envisioned when Cinderella was romanced by the handsome Prince Charming, and they went off to live in his castle where her life then became perfect; no quarrels, no problems, no dirty diapers, no sickness, and all was love and laughter. Sigh.

No, mysteries are more realistic than that. However, we do have the same motif; victim, villain and hero/heroine. The heroes or heroines may be flawed.  In fact, that makes them more interesting if they are. The reader may or may not know who the villain of the story is in advance, but will follow along with the hero/heroines’ quest to bring the villain to justice, trying to figure out as they read along, either who the villain is or how the villain is going to be uncloaked. Usually, the hero/heroine has a friend or sidekick – maybe not seven dwarfs, but someone to bounce ideas off and help them when necessary. And there may not be quite the Cinderella ending, but almost always it brings satisfaction to the reader because justice, at least in mysteries, seems to have been served. And that’s what makes mysteries so popular. It brings a sense of justice to the world of the reader. At least it does until they pick up a newspaper or watch the news on TV.

Do you like happy endings to your mysteries?