Literary Elements in "Godfather Death"
Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm are famous brothers who are known for their folk stories that are inside the book Grimm's Fairy Tales. Grimm's Fairy Tales is a collection of famous works, featuring stories we all have heard of such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Rumplestiltskin," and "Godfather Death" The Grimm Brothers use many literary aspects that help students understand essential literary elements, such as point of view, character types, and setting, especially in "Godfather Death".
In "Godfather Death" the point of view is third person, nonparticipant, and total omniscience. Throughout the story the pronouns I, me, we, and us are never used unless it is a quotation of a character, which is indicative of the third person point of view, telling the story from an outside perspective. One of the earliest pronouns used in "Godfather Death" is "Now when the thirteenth came into the world, he did not know what to do, so he ran out onto the main highway intending to ask the first one he met to be the child's godfather."
Monument to brothers Grimm on the market place in ...
English: Wilhelm Grimm
Image of scene from Grimm Brothers story Godfather...The third person pronouns continue throughout the story, continuing onward into the last few sentences in the story when the narrator writes, "But because he wanted revenge, he deliberately fumbled in placing the new candle, and the stub toppled over and went out"(32). The thoughts of the father are the first way to prove omniscience when the narrator implies what the father is thinking when the narrator declares, "The man spoke thus because he did not know how wisely God portions out wealth and poverty" (6). Nonetheless, we cannot attest to omniscience without a second source of someone else's thoughts. We also see another side of the story...