ABSTRACT
Suffering and death are very common themes in children’s and young adult (YA) literature if the embedding of the genre in popular narratives, which normally contain violence of all sorts, is taken into account. Macabre stories and bloody scenes, including the deaths of human characters, are recurring episodes in fairy tales. Many readers still feel shaken after reading Andersen’s The Red Shoes, due to the cruelty suffered by the heroine Karen, enchanted by a pair of red shoes she received when still a very young girl, and which were destroyed by the old lady who adopted her after her mother’s death. When the girl’s christening day arrived, the rich old lady gave her a new pair of red shoes in which she constantly danced without stopping. To end the non-stop ballet, the executioner amputated Karen’s feet but her pain continued until her death. However, according to Vera Teixeira de Aguiar, death episodes in fairy tales do not constitute death as a central narrative theme. It is “not even an issue to be solved or a suffering that should be overcome since it is dealt with naturally: the tale presents the child with the information that death is a fact of life and its presence may create or solve conflicting situations” (Aguiar 2010, p. 37). It is necessary, according to the author, considering its function within the narrative construction.
