When I was first presented with the topic of fairy tales, I thought I knew very little about them; they sounded like something exotic that show up occasionally as a few pictures from Disney animations. However, as the course went on, and I did the reading and discussion, I began to realize that fairy tale is actually a familiar part of my childhood memory. Even in a culture where children’s literature is commonly ignored, almost every child has read some collections of Andersen and Grimm, not to talk about the most classic tales like “Little Red Cap”, “Cinderella”, “Beauty and the Beast” or “The Little Match Girl”. The appeal of fairy tales is universal. This universal appeal keeps me motivated as I read and write about fairy tales.

In the process of writing my RA paper, the first challenge is to develop a central argument for the essay. While reading the introductions to the sections of Hans Andersen and Oscar Wilde, I noticed that both introductions build on the cruelty and tragedy in the stories, so I used it as a starting point. While the introductions focus on stories by Andersen and Wilde, other stories we read also contain scenes of cruelty and tragedy, but some are used for a different purpose, so I draw the conclusion that tales for children use cruelty and tragedy as punishment, while stories for adults use it to arouse sympathy in readers.

       Because almost all the stories I have read for this class contain some scenes of cruelty or tragedy, it took some struggle to decide on which stories to analyze. I decided temporarily on “Little Red Cap” for the part of children’s stories, and “The Little Match Girl” for the adult part. However, I did not give up completely on the other stories until I got near the bottom of my paper; at first I saved them in case the two stories of my choice fails to provide enough information for a full paper of reasonable length. I had this concern because both stories of my choice are short: “Little Red Cap” is about three pages long, and “The Little Match Girl”, about two pages. Another factor that drives me to prepare extra stories to analyze is because I am not skillful at writing long essays; in the CR exercises analyzing only one story, I struggled to reach the 500-words requirement.

At the same time, I also acknowledge that I need to avoid piling evidence from numerous stories without analyzing in depth. As I write, I paid special attention to finding evidence and forming arguments related to the evidence so that I don’t leave out any point that may add to my analysis. Consequently, the first draft of my RA paper consists of evidence and arguments that are not arrange in any logical order; it reflects how my thoughts skipped from one argument to another, then back, and forth again. In the following drafts, I had to change the sequence of paragraphs and add transitions to make the analysis clear and logical. Luckily, such efforts to dig into details of evidence worked and I got enough evidence out of the two stories chosen at first, and there was no need for the other stories so I abandoned them.

During the process of revision, I made major changes to the paragraph analyzing “The Little Match Girl”, for I relied on my previous CR exercises when writing that paragraph in first draft and failed to show how the contrasting worlds relate to my thesis. Feedback from conference with the instructor helped me realize this problem and I revised this paragraph to clarify this relationship. I also made some subtle changes to language, rephrasing my arguments to make them more concise and analytic.

Writing conclusion has always been challenging for me; besides repeating my thesis argument, it is hard to draw a conclusion relevant to reality or the readers. From the different use of cruel or tragic scenes in stories for children and adults, I relate the argument to the development of moral judgements to answer the “so what” question, but the lead to that conclusion still seems fairly abrupt. If I will work further on this paper, this conclusion is what I will focus on.

       Unlike the RA paper, which focuses on a single aspect of the stories, the RIP project requires comprehensive planning of all aspects in the rhetoric triangle, which makes it more challenging than the RA paper. And the fact its genre being not an essay makes it even harder to control these aspects: that means I can no longer simply state who my audience are, what my theme (or thesis) is, and why it is important. Of course, I do state them directly in the essay, but the problem is that they also need to go into the project itself. My choice of genre, audience and theme does not make this easy for me.

       For my RIP project, I decided to write a fairy tale version of “The Little Mermaid”, to an audience of young adults. However, when the story is finished, peer reviewers insist that it is written for children; they do not even bother read the story to draw this conclusion, for their experience with fairy tales tells them that fairy tales are for children. Ironically, some of them wrote their own projects to convince readers that fairy tales are for not only children but also adults. But their instinct tells them the opposite. Perhaps they just want to argue for something they don’t believe (which is what I did in my RIP and I will explain later), but this general belief makes it extremely difficult to make my story appeal to adults. I have revised my project by telling it in a more abstract and emotional style to make my choice of adult audience stand out in the story, but still, it is hard to break the stereotype completely with the project itself. My audience should become more obvious if the story is published in a young adult literature magazine as planned. Nevertheless, I will continue to improve in this aspect if given the chance.

       For the theme of the project, I want to approve selfless love as the reason for sacrifice, and criticize those who see sacrifice as part of a trade. In my proposal and early drafts I received comments of confusion, asking what I mean by this or how it relates to reality. People who ask the last question are generally those I classify as unintended audience. To address the first question, I tried to make the thesis in the story as clear as possible. Unfortunately, direct reference to theme, for example saying things like “this story tells us that. . .”, makes the story sound artificial and childish, and less appealing to my audience. I struggled to find the balance, and I was able to come up with a solution, by putting the theme in the character’s dialogues without interrupting the plot of the story. In this way, the project clearly presents it theme, and, despite sounding slightly artificial, does not appear childish in its way of presenting the theme.

In my attempt to balance my theme and my audience, I applied a slightly unusual yet useful technique. Although it seems more natural to put myself in the position of the rhetor, instead I took a different approach by putting myself in my audience, being a young adult who believes that parental sacrifice is an investment that expects remuneration. In this way, I was able to predict my audience’s reaction towards the project: as I read my draft, I know when the audience will resent to my preaching the moral, and where they may find the story boring. And I also understand that I cannot expect to change their mind immediately with just a single piece of story, but it should stay in their mind and influence their belief in a gradual process. By predicting my audience’s reaction, I know how to revise my text to cater to the needs of my audience.

I chose a challenging project for my RIP, and as I proceeded with this project and resolved the problems and conflicts, this project also helped me gain deeper knowledge and control of the aspects of the rhetoric triangle and the relationships between them.