Why Fairy Tales?

       From the Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim, 1977

      1.  According to Bettelheim, what is man's greatest need and 
           most difficult achievement?

      2.  What does one need to believe to find deeper meaning in 
           life?

      3.  What's wrong with the having children learn to read from 
           the preprimers and primers used to
           teach children in school?

      4.  In short, what must a story do to enrich a child's life?

      5.  Why does Bettelheim that that folk fairy tales are the most enriching and satisfying literature to
           children and adults?

      6.  What does a moral education need to do?

      7.  Why do children find folk fairy tales more satisfying than all other children's stories?

      8.  What is the consequence of adults wanting children to believe that all men are good?

      9.  What exactly is the message that fairy tales get across to children?

     10. What and why do fairy tales simplify?

     11.  How does the fairy tale promote morality?

     12.  How are children helped by the depiction of fairy tale characters as clearly bad or clearly good?

     13.  Once a child understands that there are great differences between people, what must she or he decide?

     14.  What is the question a child asks himself to make that decision?

     15.  If morality is not the issue in fairy tales, what is?  Why?

     16.  What feelings do children experience and how does modern children's literature deal with them?

     17.  What do fairy tales tell a child will help him escape his separation anxiety?

     18.  What happens if a child holds on to his parents desperately to escape separation anxiety?

     19.  Why does the fairy-tale hero (child)  have to go out into the world?

     20.  Why does the fairy tale portray the hero as alone and isolated in the beginning?

     21.  What does the fate of the fairy tale heroes convince the child of?