Every Spinning Wheel Exterminated And Briar Rose example essay topic

"Briar Rose" is the classic fairytale of Sleeping Beauty come to life. And what a life it is taken from her family, hidden way from her destine. Only for fate to come and intervene. The story tells of fairies and prophecies. The author Anne Sexton, speaks of an insomniac laying awake at night in "Briar Rose" Consider a girl who keeps slipping off, arms limp as old carrots, into a hypnotist's trance, into a spirit world speaking with the gift of tongues. she is stuck in the time machine, suddenly two years sucking her thumb, inward as a snail, learning to talk again. She's on a voyage.

She swimming further and further back, / up like a salmon, struggling into her mother's pocketbook. Little doll children, come to Papa. Sit on my knee. I have a kiss for the back of your neck.

A penny for your thoughts, Princess. I will hunt them like emeralds. Come be my's nookie and I will give you a root. That kind of voyage, rank as honeysuckle. Once a king had a christening for his daughter Briar Rose and because he had only twelve gold plates he asked only twelve fairies to he grand event.

The thirteenth fairy, her fingers as long and thin as straws, her eyes burnt by cigarettes, her uterus an empty teacup, arrived with an evil gift. She made the prophecy: The princess shall prick herself on a spinning wheel in her fifteenth year and then fall dead Kaput! The court fell silent. The king looked like Mook's Scream. Fairies prophesies in times like those held water. However the twelfth fairy had a certain kind of eraser and thus mit-I-gated the curse. changing that death into a hundred year sleep.

The king ordered every spinning wheel Exterminated and Briar Rose grew to be a goddess and each night the king bit the hem of her gown to keep her safe. He fastened the moon up with a safety pin to give her a perpetual light. He force every male in the count to scour his tongue with Bab - o lest they poison the air she dwell in. Thus she dwelt in his odor. Rank as honeysuckle. On her fifteenth birthday she pricked her finger on a spinning wheel and the clocks stopped Yes indeed.

She went to sleep the king and queen went to sleep, the courtiers, the flies on the wall. The fire in the hearth grew still And the roast meat stopped crackling. The trees turned into metal and the dogs became china. They all lay in a trance, each a catatonic stuck in a time machine. Even frogs were zombies. Only a bunch of briar rose grew forming a great wall of tacks around the castle.

Many princes tried to get through the brambles for they had heard much of Briar Rose but they had not scoured their tongues so they were held by the thorns and thus were crucified. In due time a hundred years passed and a prince got through. The briar parted as if for Moses and the prince found the tableau intact. He kissed Briar Rose and she woke up crying: Daddy! Daddy!

Presto! She's out of prison! She married the prince and all went well except for the fear - the fear of sleep. Briar Rose was an insomniac...

She could not nap or lie in sleep without the court chemist mixing her some knock out drops and never in the presence of the prince. If it is to come, she said, sleep must take me unawares while I am laughing or dancing so that I do not dream, for when I do I see the table set and a faltering crone at my place, her eyes burnt by cigarettes as she eats betrayal like a slice of meat. I must not sleep for while asleep I'm ninety and think I'm dying. Death rattles in my throat like a marble.

I wear tube like earrings. I lie as still as a bar iron. You can stick a needle through my kneecap and I won't flinch I'm all shoot up with Novocain. This trance girl is yours to do with. You could lay her in a grave. And shovel dirt on her face and she'd never call back: Hello there!

But if you kiss her on the mouth her eyes would spring open and she'd call out: Daddy! Daddy! Presto! She's out of prison.

There was a theft. That much I am told. I was abandoned. That much I know. I was forced forward I was forced backward I was passed from hand to hand like a bowl of fruit. Each night I am nailed into place and forget who I am.

Daddy There's another kind of prison, It's not the prince at all, but the father, drunkenly bent over my bed, circling the abyss like a shark, my father thick upon me like a sleeping jellyfish What voyage this, girl God help - this life after death 31 b.