In the essay "Cinderella": A Story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflicts." Bruno Bettelheim begins with saying that Cinderella is probably the best known fairy tale and it was first developed in China around 9th century A.D. The story was about misery and hopes, which involve sibling rivalry. Bettelheim vaguely describes different versions of Cinderella that involved sibling rivalry. Bettelheim uses the story of Cain and Able from the Bible to support one of his statements. Cain and Able is the story of two brothers going head to head and eventually one being destroyed by the other. Bettelheim then goes into an outburst of his thesis on how the Cinderella story effects the way children feel about sibling rivalry. After describing that Cinderella did all the work around the house, the sisters didn't respect her and

she got no credit for all the good work she had done, Bettelheim says, "This is how the child feels when devastated by the miseries of sibling rivalry." Bettelheim also explains that when a story relates to a child in a specific way, the story creates some kind of "truth" for that child. Overall, Bettelheim writes how Cinderella tells about sibling rivalry in its most extreme physique, which is the jealousy and hatred of the stepsisters. Overall, the essay is pretty informing, but I feel that a weakness in his essay is that he tends to use his opinions when he's comparing Cinderella to children, and he doesn't have very strong or professional sources to back up his opinions. However, the sources that he does use help to understand more in depth about his opinion.

Bettelheim writes this essay mostly to inform readers about how the Cinderella story affects young audiences all around. His (Bettelheim's) essay definitely fulfills its purpose, but he fulfills his purpose by using his own opinions a lot of the time. Although I admire his opinions and value what he believes, I think he should have supported his opinions with more authoritative examples. For instance at one time Bettelheim states, "Her story reminds the child at the same time how lucky he is, and how much worse things could be." Where did he get such information? Even though he may feel this way or think that other children feel this way, that does not mean that every child does feel that way. I remember watching Cinderella as a child and it never once made me think about how lucky I was. Not because I was treated the same as her, but because when a chi

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Approximate Word count = 1095
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)