You Must Become Lost
The Fairy Tale Forest: Part One
Part Two: The Hero’s Journey vs The Forest Story
Part Three: Who Goes into the Forest?
Part Five: The Ones We Meet in Darkness
The forest is terribly old, terribly large, and terribly dark. It is so old it remembers the dawn of courage and, before that, the reign of fear. It is so large you could wander it until you withered into dust. It is so dark it could swallow up the light in your eyes and the flame in your heart—and it will, if you let it. It is teeming with dangers beyond your wildest imaginings.
And you, dear traveler, must go as deep into it as you can bear, and deeper still, and become thoroughly lost.
Whether you stand at the edge of its roots and branches, are lost in its depths, or have been lucky enough to make it out, slay a dragon or two, and win your kingdom, the forest is part of your life. That ancient, endless, light-swallowing place may be horrible, but it is better to enter it than to stay safe by the hearth.
I am speaking, of course, of the fairy tale forest. It looms high and hungry in these stories, standing just beyond the homes of youngest sons and imperiled maidens. Our heroes go fearlessly into its depths. The young men seek their fortunes and the young women flee wicked stepmothers and unwanted suitors—you may note the distinct difference between those motivations, and we will address that another time. For now, our concern is the forest itself.
Like everything else to be found in a fairy tale, the true nature of the forest lies beneath the surface. I am sure you have encountered it, but I suspect it didn’t look anything like a forest to you. It probably looked like a college campus, a new city, an office. It wears many faces. You know the forest by the fear squeezing your heart, the utter aloneness, and, of course, the certainty that you will never, ever make it out alive.
The forest is the great and terrible challenge which prepares you for the greater and more terrible challenges to come. It is filled with strange creatures, the bewitched and the bewitching, allies and enemies, and rarely will you be able to trust appearances.
It is impossible to leave as the same person who entered. The forest changes you. It is a place of growing, and so to survive the forest you must grow. There are dragons ahead, and ogres, castles and winds and dances in your future, and if you are to face them and triumph you must first navigate the forest.
The reason I feel the need to say all this is simple, if a bit depressing: We don’t tell proper forest stories anymore. Today, the fairy tales with which people are familiar are generally lacking in bold entries into the foreboding embrace of trees. People don’t seem to know the stories the way they used to, and the ones they do know have usually been defanged. Worse still, it is all too common for cautionary tales to be lumped in with fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood being perhaps the worst offender.
In the same way the Wolf disguises himself as the Grandmother, Little Red Riding Hood is a moralizing, finger-wagging, trite little story clothed in the symbolism of fairy tales to lure in its audience and eat them bones and all. We will discuss how it twists the role of the Wolf another time, but for now let us consider its shameless bastardization of the forest.
When Red is sent into the forest (and that is another problem with this story; the hero of a true forest story chooses to enter, but once again that is a separate topic), she is told to stay on the path no matter what. “The path” is virtue. To be more accurate, virtue in its most simplistic, toothless sense. To stay on the path is to remain entirely innocent—ignorant of the world, its dangers, and even one’s own ability to face them. Little Red Riding Hood tells you to be good. It tells you to be obedient. It doesn’t tell you to be brave, or clever, or even kind.
If you live your life by the rules of Little Red Riding Hood, there is nothing but dullness and danger in your future. If you keep your head down and stay on the path, taking no risks and obeying all the rules, the best thing that can happen to you is an incredibly small, boring life. Nothing but wasted potential and unrealized ambition. That’s bad enough—it’s hell, in its own way, the claustrophobic emptiness of a life you do not lead but follow—but that is the best case scenario.
One of the great lies of Little Red Riding Hood is that the Wolf will eat you if you wander in the forest. But that is not why the Wolf eats Red, despite what the story tries to tell you. The Wolf eats her because she is innocent. She does not recognize threats when she sees them, no matter how poorly disguised—if they are disguised at all. She knows nothing of the real world; her whole life is confined to her village, the path, and Grandmother’s house. Innocence is a wonderful thing, but it becomes a weakness all too soon. Innocence gets you eaten. The story does get a couple things right. One: predators prey on the weak and the old. Two: the woodsman, who knows the forest, is the one who triumphs over evil.
The danger of innocence is far better and more clearly expressed in a true fairy tale: Sleeping Beauty. While mainstream fairy tales rarely express the necessity of the forest, Sleeping Beauty warns of what happens without its influence. Evil is an inevitability, as the King and Queen should have realized when the wicked fairy showed up at the Princess’ christening without an invitation. But the monarchs do not learn, and when the Princess is cursed they take the same approach they took with the guest list: instead of preparing for inevitable danger, they attempt to prevent it.
The Princess grows up to become a girl very much like Little Red Riding Hood at the outset of her story: pure and good and entirely innocent. She has no concept of evil, danger, or risk. Or spinning wheels, so naturally she pricks her finger on the first spindle she ever sees. Fate never does care how clever you are. Happily ever after or not, the curse of Sleeping Beauty is a self-fulfilling prophecy worthy of Sophocles.
One hundred years pass in slumber, in frozen adolescence, in helplessness. One hundred years of thorns growing wild and cruel about her castle. One hundred years for the structure to be lost to time within hedge and forest, and for the Princess to be lost within it. Only then does the Prince come.
There are some who believe this to be the great flaw of the story, which is what happens when fairy tales are taken at face value. But just as the forest is only a forest on the surface, the Prince is not merely a Prince. He is part of the Princess: her animus, her aggression, her long-awaited worldliness. Beneath the surface of Sleeping Beauty, the Princess saves herself. She awakens into womanhood (and the accompanying sexuality symbolized by true love’s kiss), a stronger and fuller person for the trial she overcame. She may not have gotten lost in the forest on purpose, but she made it out in the end.
You cannot sleep forever. You cannot remain always within the safety of your village. You cannot stay placid and obedient and innocent. Not if you want a full life, if you want to live into your potential, if you want to truly live at all. The vast green expanse stands and waits, the slayer of weakness and the maker of heroes. It will be everything you fear, but you could make it everything you hope. You must go into the forest and you must become lost.
Thank you for reading this, the first of several posts on the fairy tale forest. At the risk of sounding like a cheesy, insufferable influencer: Please like, subscribe, comment, and share—all of those things that please the dark algorithm entities.
Seek the forest. Feed the wolf. Be brave, be clever, be kind.
Brb going run headfirst into the forest