Philosophical Story Challenge

Hello everyone, welcome to Saturday. It’s the weekend which means it’s time for a philosophical story challenge. For this week’s challenge I want us to consider a relatively old children’s movie called “The Swan Princess.” This movie was a big part of my childhood and there is a particular scene from it which stands out in my mind. In this scene one of the characters in the movie is warning the hero that a monster “is not what it seems.” This was important to the story because the monster was in fact a villainous sorcerer, however, I think it also held a deeper symbolism. To those of you who are also familiar with the Disney classic “Sleeping Beauty” and the modern retelling of “Maleficent” I think you may understand the connection I see. I think all of these movies have a theme of characters being vilified because the other characters don’t understand them. That’s not to say that the sorcerer in “The Swan Princess” was not really a villain, but that I think he became a villain because he was misunderstood. The monster was not what it seemed, it was a sorcerer; likewise, the sorcerer might also not have been everything he seemed. Simply put: appearances are deceiving. Your challenge this week is to write a story which portrays this theme.