Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Discussion 1 - "The Gold Key" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

1. Does anyone remember--and this is partially a selfish question--if "The Gold Key" corresponds to a particular Grimm fairy tale or if she's purely using this as a way to set up the speaker, etc? I think I found a story titled "The Gold Key" once, but I don't have my complete Grimm with me in North Carolina.

2. How would you describe the tone Sexton establishes from the beginning of this collection? Is it pretty consistent throughout or do you see subtle changes?

3. Talk about some of the imagery Sexton uses, in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" particularly. What did you think of lines like "cheeks as fragile as cigarette papers" and "rolling her china blue doll eyes open and shut?"

4. Why do you think she chose to retell "Snow White?" What does this poem accomplish as a literary work? Do you find it particularly innovative as far as retellings go?

2 comments:

Cathy...Grammy...Cat...Mom...Sis said...

According to what I can find on the web, there was a short Grimm fairy tale called The Golden Key which can be found at http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm200.html

That being said, yes! I do believe Anne Sexton was setting us up in her attempt to make us believe that the Gold key found by the boy, opened the box with answers to all of life's questions. Apparently Anne thought she knew all the answers to the questions that her unusual poems raised...I, on the other hand, don't have a clue!!

Andi said...

Thank you for the link, Cathy! I knew I'd found it somewhere, but when I was posting the questions I just did a quick Google search and didn't find it. I'll check it out again.