KidLit Forum

The Juniper Tree
By Grimm Brothers
At the beginning of the story a woman and a man are sad because they do not have children. On day, the woman stays under the juniper tree and cuts her finger. Drops of blood fall on the snow and in that moment she wishes for a child white as blood and red as blood. Her wish is granted and she has a baby boy but she dies short after. She is buried under the juniper tree and after a while, the man marries another woman. She had a daughter as well and she did not love the boy. She abused her stepson and one day she killed him. She cooks the poor boy and gives him to his father to eat. The girl keeps the bones and buries them under the juniper tree. From there a beautiful bird arises. The bird flies in the town always singing about the way a stepmother killed her stepson and cooked him. Captivated with the song, some local people give the bird a chain made out of gold, a pair of red shoes and a millstone. The bird, who turns to be the little boy, returns home. He drops the millstone to his stepmother’s head killing her, gives the shoes to his sister and the chain to his father. The bird turns now into the boy and confesses to his father and they live happily ever after.

At the beginning of the story I observe a similarity with Snow White. Just like in the Snow White, there is a woman who cuts herself by accidents and the drops of blood fall on the snow and she wished to have a baby white as snow with lips red as blood. As the story goes forward, it becomes more grotesque and frightening.

It’s possible that the bird’s song may be an allegory for the end of the boy’s childhood. The moment he realizes all: "It was my mother who butchered me,
It was my father who ate me,
My sister, little Marleen,
Found all my little bones,
Bound them in a silken cloth,
And laid them under the juniper tree.
Peewit, peewit, what a beautiful bird am I!"

The archetypal of the stepmother is very present in fairy tales. We have many examples: Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Snow White and so on. Also, we have the symbolism of the apple. This is the forbidden fruit and in our case the reason for which the stepmother kills her son.
The father is unaware of the situation and this makes him a naïve person, an element frequently found in fairy tales. The antagonists are always the mothers/women and not the fathers/men. A similar situation is in Hansel and Gretel where the stepmother comes with the idea of abandoning the kids in the forest and the father has nothing else to do but to agree. I don’t agree with this. The father in both fairy tales had to try to find the kids.
We have also the symbolism of the bird. Here the bird represents idea of freedom, escaping from her mother’s control. Finally, the juniper tree symbolizes life because from there the boy’s soul rises as a bird. We may think that the tree gave life to the boy two times: one when his mother wished under the tree to have a baby, and two, when his bones were buried there and a bird rise.