Sheena T.

Navarra
Great Books
03 eLMS Activity 1 Essay
Instructions: Watch the video attentively. Write an essay using the guide questions that follow.
• Who are the characters in the story? Where are the settings?
• Would you know another story similar to the theme of the story? What does the theme of the story tell us?
• Where do you think the story came from? Who originally wrote the story? Where do you think the story is derived?
from?
• What are the commonalities and differences from the different versions of the story?
The characters in this story include, the main character, Cinderella whose mother dies and she is left with her
father. Cinderella is depicted as a good girl. The next character is Cinderella’s step mother; depicted as ill-
tempered. She has two daughters who are shown as proud and as ill-tempered as their mother. Next is the prince,
who’s looking for a woman who fits the shoe. There is also Cinderella’s godmother who is shown as a good woman,
and last the birds. The story takes place in the palace.

The significance of human values in the story’s central theme. Even after being treated poorly, Cinderella is
incredibly kind to her step mother. Even though her step sisters hate her, she is still kind to them. When she is
ultimately the only one who can marry the prince, her goodness pays reward. Because of that, she is loved, and her
step sisters make amends to her. Despite their desire, the step sisters are unable to marry the prince. Thus, this
tale emphasizes the need of having a decent disposition and upholding moral principles

The Cinderella we know and love are from the French story Cendrillon, which is published in 1697 by Charles
Perrault. Charles Perrault is a French novelist, though Chinese and Greek versions of this classic tale go back to
the 9th century CE and 6th century BCE. The Cinderella story was the first published on 1634 and it’s first version
was written in Europe and published in Naples, Italy by Giambattista Basile, in this Pentamerone.

The commonalities of the version of the story are that, Cinderella is helped by her fairy god mother and saved by
a prince, she also experienced cruelty from her step mother and step sisters in both of the stories, and Cinderella
showed her kindness and courage from the beginning until the end. On the other hand, the differences between
the two version, Cinderella has a glass shoe and other one has gold shoe. Also, the one version there’s a god mother
who’s giving Cinderella a magical dress, while the other one is Cinderella wishing on the tree for her dress. And
also, the one version has a soft, full of fantasy kind of approach to the story, while the other one has a brutal scene
in Cinderella’s step sisters had black eye by the birds.