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The roles in fairy tales are pluralistic, so no matter the kind-hearted and beautiful princess, handsome and brave prince, wicked witch, and personified bugs, fish, birds, or beasts, are indispensable elements in fairy tales. The long-lasting charm of fairy tales lies in the context that helps children, through identification, observation, purification, and empathy, to deal with the internal conflicts in their growth. Thus, the characteristics and arrangement of roles in fairy tales is very important.
The Grimm’s Fairy Tales have always been an important collection of works for children growth. In the tales, the main figures always leave a deep impression on readers. According to the different functions of an important event, the French narratologist, A. J. Greimas proposed that the roles in a tale can be categorized into 6 agents, including subject, object, sender, receiver, helper, and opponent. Based on this model, this paper analyzed the types of each role in the Grimm’s Fairy Tales and further investigated the roles and functions of each character in the tale to understand the characteristics of roles and the relations among them.
The subjects in the Grimm’s Fairy Tales are usually played by human, animals, and plants. In the tales, the common traits of subjects presented in the tales include honesty, kind-heartedness, and beauty. As the Grimm’s Fairy Tales are tralatitious stories that reflect the lifestyles of common people, the goals pursued by subjects also surround eating, clothing, living, and transportation. In the process of pursuing the objects, subjects are usually interfered by a witch, a stepmother, or a fierce beast. Due to the kindness, honesty, and other virtues, subjects can always be able to receive helps of magic, treasures, clairvoyance, or penetrating hearing. At last, most of the subjects will become a receiver, who wins the object as wish.
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