Yann Martel
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And the other thing too about myth is, as I said, it's malleable, it's elastic.
I'll give you another example.
Little Red Riding Hood, which I mentioned in Son of Nobody actually in passing, it's a thousand year old myth.
It was first written in 1787 by Charles Perrault in France, in 1687, 1697 by Charles Perrault.
In that original iteration, Little Red Riding Hood
and her grandmother die.
Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten up.
In fact, she gets decapitated by the wolf and then eaten up.
End of story.
It's a redemptive tale.
I'm not sure what about.
I guess don't cross the woods.
I think it's patriarchal.
That's why her Little Red Riding Hood and there's two women who die.
I think it was patriarchy.
Don't go too far from men or bad things will happen.
But it was a cautionary tale that was really pretty grim.
Well, when the Grimm brothers wrote it down in 1812,
They said, that's too much of a downer.
So suddenly there's this heroic huntsman who saves the day.