Why We Still Need Horrible and Blood-Curdling Stories

Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.

Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.

- Introduction to the Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, 1900

I was about eight years old when my Dad took me to the local library for the first time. I still remember the faded green carpets, the life-size mural of a lazy-eyed squirrel Nutkin squinting at me from the reading corner, and the time I accidentally pulled the fire alarm and the entire second floor had to be evacuated. I say accidentally because what else is an eight-year old supposed to do with a fire-engine red lever that says, “Pull.”

But the thing I remember most were the shelves and shelves of Baum’s “old time fairy tales,” which included the Grimms, Hans Christian Andersen, George MacDonald, and Andrew Lang. These were a different animal than the ones read to us in school. The fairy’s, for starters, weren’t sparkly little winged creatures but tortured supernatural beings that lived under trees or in swamps. Virtuous characters frequently found themselves, at the end of a grueling journey, with staggering wealth while the ne’re-do-wells would end up flayed, boiled, or minced into cat food.

Grimm’s The Juniper Tree is a particularly fine specimen as it checks all the boxes of pure pre-20th century juvenile horror:

- A possessed step-mother

- At least one decapitation

- Boy stew

- Death by millstone

- A vengeful sparrow

These are just some of the “fearsome and blood-curdling incidents” that may have provoked Baum’s enthusiasm for “newer wonder tales.”

Although in Baum’s comments we see the shallowness of pre-war idealism on full display, we shouldn’t be too hard on him. Industrialization had brought with it increased production and efficiency, lower prices, more goods, and improved wages; which in turn had led to plummeting infant mortality rates and a life expectancy past 23. With the rise of the machine, however, came the idea that we had risen above nature. The dark days of history were over. Wicked stepmothers andbloodthirsty fairies became the domain of a superstitious barbarism that modern people no longer needed.

If the unsavoury bits of the world had been conquered, so the thinking went, and if “modern education” could supply children with morals (i.e., manners), then authors could finally distance themselves from “disagreeable incidents” and busy themselves with “entertainment.”

Evil, it turns out, had been a mechanical flaw.

The nightmare of modernism

After two world wars, people wanted their money back.

It turns out machines hadn’t fixed our nature — they had only made us more efficient at killing each other. What was worse, since writers had abandoned disagreeable fairy tales half-a-century previous, everyone only had a string of chintzy wonder tales to help them navigate the spiritual devastation all around them. This would, in time, provoke a kind of literary counter-revolution by men like Lewis, Tolkein and Williams.

Unable to cope after the modernist exile, the West would attempt to rebuild the old religious world using bits of traditional Christianity mixed up with pieces of Eastern mysticism. The result was similar to Jews’ second-temple, and provoked a similar wailing and teeth-gnashing from those who remembered the first. We had arrived at post-modernism, which was essentially an edifice of spirituality devoid of the biblical doctrine of sin. It too hated the old fairy tale, and continued full steam ahead on the entertainment train.

The problem was that when you try to extricate all traces of disagreeability from the world, you end up whatever good you might have gained in the process. This is because, Haldir’s words, “In all lands, love is now mingled with grief.” In this world they are an indisolluable potion; you drink them as a unit or you die of thirst. To opt for tales of pure entertainment is, perhaps, to permit readers a few moments of distraction. But so what? Aslan told the Pevensie children that because of their adventures in Narnia, they would know him better in the real world. But the cheap tricks and gimmicks of most modern stories do the opposite — we leave the fantasy world further estranged from our own, from ourselves, and from our Creator.

Baum himself realizes this is true, which is why he includes so many disagreeble elements in his own story. In the midst of a Wicked Witch of the West, there is mingled a Glinda of the South. In the midst of familial estrangement, there is a tin man, a scarecrow, and a lion to remind her of what she has. Now make no mistake, I’m not talking about recovering old tales solely for their usefulness as moral mediums. A story should always be written for it’s own sake as a good story. But at the same time, a good story always works within the fixed realities of nature: the bad, and the good. Name me one good story that doesn’t.

A manic obsession with two-dimensional entertainment will ruin your soul. It will also keep you from the best stories.

Many people, even professing Christians, share similar reservations about the Old Testament. Surely its [true] stories are too dark and graphic for a modern audience, and especially for modern children. Sure. But they are also human stories. They are nature as it stands without God — which is exactly why we need them. Such stories keep us floating off into skittle-colored illusions about our humanity. A thorn was given me, Paul said, to keep me from becoming too exalted. In the blood-curdling incidents of literature and biblical history, we too find a thorn to keep us humble. And most importantly, poised towards a Savior.

When we dispense with the heartaches and nightmares of old tales, we also dispense with their comfort. And what happens when we’re visited by suffering in real life? What happens when we hear it scratching inside the walls or howling at the moon? Will an imagination fed on a diet of entertainment be equipped to do battle with them?

The old stories are true. Those who endure steadfastly under the griefs, pains, and persecutions of this world will indeed receive riches beyond imagining. They will judge angels. They will inherit an eternal life of joy without death or tears. Those who reject wisdom and the bloody sacrifice of the Heavenly Prince will be thrown into the lake of fire. Graphic? Yes. But true.

As Christians, we need not fear such darkness. For the light of Christ has come, and the darkness has not overcome it.