Challenge Check-in 3!

For my challenge, I had to read the original fairy tale of The Little Mermaid and also watch the Disney animated movie. From this activity I learned a lot about Disney itself; that it thrives on happy endings. I also learned, at least with the case of The Little Mermaid, that Disney took a minute amount of the actual story and made a new story around that bit of history. From a Gothic stand point, I didn't learn a whole lot of what I didn't already know. To me, the Gothic is anything that is scary to a person. You could even go as far as saying that it is anything that goes wrong in a person's life, because that in itself is a scary thing to have happen. In the life of the original little mermaid, her dreams were crushed by the prince not loving the little mermaid. In the animated film, Ariel almost had her dreams crushed by the sea witch, who was plotting against Ariel. My understanding of the Gothic has been further enhanced through this challenge by showing me that there are different levels of Gothic. There is light and friendly Gothic like Disney's interpretation of The Little Mermaid where there are some wrong doings but in the end everything comes out okay. There is also a heavier kind of Gothic that is represented in the original tale of The Little Mermaid where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Although, defining Gothic in this fairy tale is up to the person who has read the story and everyone's interpretation is different.