the little mermaid
OK, brace yourself for a tear-jerking, utterly depressing synopsis. There is a mermaid princess who lives at the bottom of the sea with her five sisters, her regal grandmother and her monarch father. The mermaid very much wants legs and to rise to the land of humans to be with a prince whom she saved from a shipwreck. She is completely in love with him and I mean COMPLETELY; the girl is crushing hard and bordering on obsessed! Her grandmother tells her that mermaids, unlike humans, have no soul and, even though their life span is a lengthy 300 years, when they die they turn to sea foam rather than rise to heaven. This is the final straw for the mermaid. She is desperate to be with the prince and since she has no chance of an afterlife anyway, she decides to visit the disgusting sea witch for help. This witch (who lets toads eat from her mouth, let's snakes slither all over her, has disagreeable killer polyps in her garden and who lives in a house made of the bones of drowned sailors) was obviously a last resort but you gotta do what you gotta do when you're smitten by someone on two legs and damned to live all of eternity as foam, am I right? Anyhooo, the witch takes the mermaid’s beautiful voice (by literally cutting out her tongue) as payment for a potion that will grant the mermaid legs (with the condition that they will cause her constant agony) and a soul. Oh, but she only gets to have a soul if the prince winds up “loving her more than his parents” and marrying her. It seems like there are a lot of caveats to this deal (she will be mute, in perpetual agony and will only be granted a soul if she becomes a wife) but she’s out of options so she accepts the terms.
Long story slightly shorter, the prince doesn't fall in love with her even though she follows him around everywhere giving him doe-y expressions with oversized former-mermaid eyes. To make matters even worse, eventually she has to watch him marry another woman. So now she’s mute AND bereft – ouch! According to the witch's spell, the mermaid will die the dawn after the prince is married to the other woman so the mermaid tries to make the most of her last night alive by dancing for the prince on agonizing legs (still mute of course). Her mermaid sisters appear and tell her they made a deal with the witch – hooray, a possible escape from this horrible predicament! According to the sisters, if the mermaid stabs and kills the prince she will become a mermaid again and get to live out what's left of her 300 year life span. She chooses to throw herself into the water and end her own life instead (quietly of course because her muteness is never-ending). Yup, that's right, the little mermaid had to choose between murder and suicide and she chose suicide (still mute of course). Then some "children of the air", which may or may not be angels, take her into the clouds and give her a whole new set of awfully bleak conditions in order to potentially earn a soul. Who knows what finally becomes of her. With her luck she will probably have to spend eternity working in a sweatshop or something (I’m guessing she’ll still be mute).
Saddest line in that whole depressing tale: "But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more". The moral of this story? Ugh, I don't know.....I guess, never trust a woman who lives in a house made of bones and only accepts tongues as currency? That, and if you ever see a mermaid in real life, for god sake give her a hug - she suffers so much more!
Long story slightly shorter, the prince doesn't fall in love with her even though she follows him around everywhere giving him doe-y expressions with oversized former-mermaid eyes. To make matters even worse, eventually she has to watch him marry another woman. So now she’s mute AND bereft – ouch! According to the witch's spell, the mermaid will die the dawn after the prince is married to the other woman so the mermaid tries to make the most of her last night alive by dancing for the prince on agonizing legs (still mute of course). Her mermaid sisters appear and tell her they made a deal with the witch – hooray, a possible escape from this horrible predicament! According to the sisters, if the mermaid stabs and kills the prince she will become a mermaid again and get to live out what's left of her 300 year life span. She chooses to throw herself into the water and end her own life instead (quietly of course because her muteness is never-ending). Yup, that's right, the little mermaid had to choose between murder and suicide and she chose suicide (still mute of course). Then some "children of the air", which may or may not be angels, take her into the clouds and give her a whole new set of awfully bleak conditions in order to potentially earn a soul. Who knows what finally becomes of her. With her luck she will probably have to spend eternity working in a sweatshop or something (I’m guessing she’ll still be mute).
Saddest line in that whole depressing tale: "But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more". The moral of this story? Ugh, I don't know.....I guess, never trust a woman who lives in a house made of bones and only accepts tongues as currency? That, and if you ever see a mermaid in real life, for god sake give her a hug - she suffers so much more!