I remember first teaching this short story to my Seniors and the
way that they were all repulsed by the final paragraph and the ending of this modern fairy tale
in South Africa. In particular, the bloody end that the boy meets whilst trying to enact the
fairy tale in his book is incredibly shocking. Note how this ending is
depicted:
Next day he
pretended to be the Prince who braves the terrible thicket of thorns to enter the palace and kiss
the Sleeping Beauty back to life: He dragged a ladder to the wall, the shining coiled tunnel was
just wide enough for his little body to creep in, and with the first fixing of its razor teeth in
his knees and hands and head he screamed and struggled deeper into its
tangle.
There is an intense irony in
this passage which is crucially linked to one of the main themes of the story. The family have
supposedly had the "Dragon's Teeth" installed to protect themselves, but they end up by damaging
themselves in a way that they could never have foreseen. It appears that walls or barriers, no
matter how sophisticated or high, cannot guarantee safety or peace, and that often, when we try
to protect ourselves we actually just end up hurting oruselves, as is shown through the way the
boy is mauled.
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