Golden Hand and Brothers Grimm Rumpelstiltskin - Book Report/Review Example

Golden Hand and Brothers Grimm Rumpelstiltskin In the story Golden Hand, a male character is portrayed as a person who is aloof and barely shows any interest in his neighborhood, until a charming widowed lady arrives. The man develops a crush on the lady and the lady seemed to like him too. Both of them start talking to each other; in the door way, out on the street and pretty much everywhere they can find time and space. The lady always wears dark gloves on her hand no matter what. One day as they both were talking, the lady brushed her hair so as to push them away from her forehead, the guy notices something shining under her gloves. Upon inquiring, the lady reveals that she had lost her real hand in an accident many years ago; and this golden hand is a replacement. Hearing this, the guy’s evil nature suddenly wakes up. Lust for gold takes over the love for lady and he starts scheming to get that golden hand. From then onwards, he does everything he possibly can to win the lady’s heart and succeeds. The lady falls for his cunning trucks and they both get married. On the surface, it seems as if everything is picture perfect but underneath the sheet of innocent and pretense of love, there is evil cooking up. Only after one month, the lady dies. Apparently it is a death caused by a terminal illness but no one knows that it is the master plan of the evil genius who unfortunately was her husband. Her husband gave her poison but not all at once, slowly, little by little, each day a small calculated dose to make sure that the doctor and others were fooled into believing that it was a naturally occurring incurable disease. It isn’t surprising that the corpse is buried without her golden hand. The night after the burial, the guy sleeps in his bed, feeling proud on his victory. He thinks to himself, he had accomplished what he was planning for a long time. But the night seems to be mourning at the loss of such a beautiful lady. It is dark and the wind is howling. Among the sound of the rain, the door of the man’s room opens with a crash; and he wakes up. He sees greenish white smoke bobbing in the room. And then it takes the shape of her dead wife. She doesn’t look beautiful at all, her face is mangled and her eyes flare with fire. She demands her golden hand back, the man gasps and chokes to death as the same golden hand that he hid under his pillow kills him by strangling him. The second story Brothers Grimm Rumpelstiltskin shows some similarities with Golden Hand. First, both these stories portray gold as their main theme, an object of greed that seeds evil in the hearts of people. Second, the person who is the architect of the evil plans perishes in the end. This same theme can be found in Brothers Grimm Rumpelstiltskin, as the story goes; In a kingdom, a poor miller has to meet the king and in order to appear important in the eyes of the king he foolishly claims that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king is intrigued, he asks for the daughter and shuts her up in room full of straw to put her to the test. He tells the poor girl that if she turns all the straw into gold by dawn she will be spared otherwise, she will be hanged. The girl starts crying at her fate, suddenly the door opens and a little man comes in and asks the girl what’s the matter. Upon hearing the sad story, he tells her that he can turn straw into gold but he needs something in return. The girl agrees that she will give him her necklace if he helps her save her life by turning all the straw into gold. The little man spins all the straw into gold and in return takes her necklace and vanishes. The next morning the king finds out that straw has been turned to gold, he is impressed but gets greedier and shuts the girl up the next night too and tells her to repeat her trick again with a much bigger heap of straw or face the gallows. The girl is helpless again but that same little man reappears and helps her the same way but in return, takes the girl’s golden ring. The next morning the king finds all the golden straw and feels that his greed pot is being filled with gold, he shuts the girl again in a room and tells her to do the same thing again with a still bigger heap of straw, this time if she is to succeed the king would marry the girl. The manikin appears again and tells the girl that he can help her again only if she agrees to give him her son when she gets married to the king. The girl has no choice but to agree and then the same thing happens; all the straw is turned into gold and the kings gets satisfied that he is investing in the right market and marries the girl. After a year, she gives birth to a beautiful son, everything seems to be going like a fairy tale then suddenly the manikin appears again and demands his reward as promised. The girl starts weeping as she doesn’t want to depart with her child. The manikin gives her a chance that if within three days, she succeeds in finding out his real name, he will forget about the agreement. The girl immediately sends his servants to find out the creature’s name. One servant brings home the sad news that he couldn’t find any name that could fit the creature but also tells the girl (now the queen) that when he was travelling through the mountains, he saw a dwarf figure dancing around the fire singing that he would take the queen’s child and that his name was Rumpelstiltskin. The queen gets excited and calls for the creature and tells him his real name, the creature gets furious at hearing his name and splits himself in two parts. The second story is different in that there is some form of agreement between the greedy evil and the victim. The girl on both fronts (with the king and the manikin) has some form of contract to fulfill. But in the Golden Hand, the evil person is only after the golden hand and doesn’t consider giving his wife a chance. Read More