The Fisherman and His Wife

The Fisherman and His Wife

AUTHOR: BROTHERS GRIMM

Introduction:

    This is the tale of the fisherman and his wife, it is about a wife that feels bored of here living. Everything her husband brings to her is not what she likes, and she is always irritated. Asked the impossible things of her husband. One day, his husband is feeling emotional when he goes to the sea to rod a fish, but he is very blessed because he caught a magical fish, and the fish asked him to let her/him live. He was kindhearted and pleased with her demand, and she granted him three wishes. The fisherman had no desires, and he let her swim on.

 

    When he told his wife what had happened, she told him she wants the fish to grant her wishes. The fisherman wasn't thrilled about it because he thought we shouldn't take advantage of other people's kindness and he was also pleased with his life and didn't ask for anything more, unlike his wife.

    The moral of the story is that greedy people will never be satisfied and that they equalize their desire to have something with pricey things. Those are the people that will take advantage of other people's kindness, and their only goal is to satisfy their selfish needs. The fisherman's wife has an appetite that can't be fed, and in the end, she is left with nothing. She is left with her husband in the small house, but she can't see everything she has due to her greed.

Characters:

Fisherman: He was a godly and hardworking husband who wanted to please his greedy wife.

Wife: A greedy, dissatisfied person that took advantage of her husband's good heart. He granted all of her wishes, and she was still unhappy. 

Fish: The magical fish helped him because of his kindness.

Exposition – The Background

            A fisherman and his wife pass their days living in a shack by the sea.

Internal Conflict

        Fisherman's wife keeps wishing for things she doesn't know what the outcome will be. 

Rising Action – The Build-up

        His wife, however, reprimands him gravely for letting the fish off the hook without first demanding a wish. She insists that her husband go back the very next day, find the fish, and demand a wish in exchange for letting him go. When the fisherman asks his wife what they should wish for, she quickly responds that she wants a nice cottage instead of their "filthy" shack.

The husband obeys his wife, goes back to the seashore, calls out to the fish, who readily comes swimming back, and presents his wife’s wish. The fish, in turn, change their shack into a nice cottage.

When the fisherman returns home later that day, his wife seems happy with their new home. Feeling satisfied with himself, he says, "This is quite enough." "We will see about that," the wife retorts.

Thus ensues a daily progression of new wishes, each trading out one home for another and always increasing the wife’s station in life. She next contrives to have a palace over which she is lord, then a kingdom over which she is king, then an empire over which she is emperor, and finally all of Christendom over which she is pope.

The fisherman begs his wife not to keep demanding more wishes, but he fears her too much to refuse her bidding. Like an errand boy, he goes back day after day and fishes for wishes on her behalf. Though the fish continues to grant them in turn, the water and clouds become increasingly murky and grey. 

Climax – The Point of No Return

        Still not satisfied, the wife racks her brain all night long trying to think of what could be better than being pope. When the first rays of light streak across her bedroom, she asks, "Could not I cause the sun and the moon to rise?"

Resolution – Not So Happily Ever After

           Upon hearing it, the fish simply replies, “Go home. She is sitting in her filthy shack again.” And just like that, the fisherman and his wife lost everything they had gotten from the fish.

Falling Action – The Unraveling

            The fisherman fears his wife more than ever, as he realizes she wants to be like God. Amidst thunder and lightning, the man obediently runs away from her like a madman, calls out to the fish, and presents his wife’s newest wish.

Lesson to Learn

        Stop being greedy, because, for everything we want in our life, there is always a consequence.

A short reflection about “She might as well be from the moon”

We always have a bad and a good attitude that we always carry. We are the only ones who embrace it in both rough and smooth directions. To accomplish this, we must handle it as lightly as possible.

We should always remember that we are born in different ways. We should always be thankful for what we have in our lives because, at the end of the day, we are the ones who are responsible for our actions. We are all aware that, even if we try to avoid what we don't like, we are still pushed there because that is our destination.