Chandler's Ford Today

fairytales

Kindness and Killing in Fiction

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My topic this time for the In Fiction series is a study in contrasts.

Kindness and killing feature heavily in fiction, the latter particularly in the crime and horror genres. Kindness turns up in the classic fairytales and in fantasy and will often be those moments in a story when our hero/heroine has to rely on someone else to help them through a difficult time. It is that break, that help, which enables them to go on and successfully complete their quest etc.

This acts as a reminder to us that no man is an island, we all need help and kindness at times, and that kindness can reinvigorate us. Fiction should reflect that.

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Human Behaviour In Fiction

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Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.

One aspect of fiction, whatever its genre or length, is it does reflect on our behaviour. It isn’t flattering either, most of the time. The classic fairytales, for example, call evil out for what it is and the kind of evil shown in them (such as cruelty to step children) is something we see only far too often for real.

Stories tell us what we know. Even in the most fantastical of settings, there will be something we can identify with (otherwise, why would we read such things?).

And human behaviour is the direct reason for any story. We use stories to try to make sense of the world we know (and perhaps more than ever in crisis times such as the one we’re going through now with the situation in Ukraine).

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Animals in Fiction

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Image Credits: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books.

Some of my favourite childhood books involved animals. Think about Timmy from The Famous Five by Enid Blyton. I suspect he was the most intelligent of the lot of them.

I am an asthmatic, it was worse when I was a child and there was no question then of being able to have a dog of my own. But I could read about them and loved doing so. Ironically now I have no problems with having a dog as a companion and I still love reading. Neither do I mind animal characters as long as they are realistically portrayed.

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All the Fun of The Panto: Ali Baba and The Chameleons

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Image Credit:  Stuart Wineberg, Lionel Elliott, and the Chameleons.

If there were ever such a thing as a Chandler’s Ford Today “works outing”, it is when Janet and I go to the latest production by the Chameleon Theatre Group. This time it was to enjoy the classic fairytale, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
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Three Wishes

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Right now is the height of the pantomime season and I’m looking forward to seeing The Chameleons’ production of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves soon. It should be great fun (as Robin Hood was before). One common element to pantomimes is the use of magic. It comes in somewhere to make the character change directions or to rescue them from what seems an inescapable problem.

So let’s pretend the fairy godmother has turned up for us and, being the kindly soul she is, offered us three wishes.  What would you go for?  Firstly, the ground rules (you knew there would be some, bureaucracy gets everywhere!). [Read more…] about Three Wishes

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