Once upon a time a widow and her son, Jack came to the end of their means. The boy was sent to market to sell their cow for a good price. On the way he met a man who convinced him to exchange the cow for magic beans. When Jack returned home, his mother threw the beans out the window in anger. But the next morning Jack saw that they had grown into a massive beanstalk which extended into the sky, beyond the clouds. Three times he climbed the beanstalk and hid in a giant’s castle. Each time the giant returned home proclaiming, “Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.” The giant did not find Jack and so ate his supper and brought out his treasures. When the giant fell asleep Jack made off with the giant’s possessions. On his first trip he took gold coins, on the second, a hen that lay golden eggs, and then on his final visit he took a magic harp that could sing. However before Jack got away the third time, the harp called out and awoke the giant. The boy raced to the beanstalk with the giant close behind, and as he climbed down he called to his mother to bring his ax. The beanstalk was cut down, the giant fell to his death, and Jack and his mother lived in peace the rest of their days.
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Some older and wiser people will laugh at me when I admit that I almost stopped reading “Jack and the Beanstalk” to my students because of its problematic moral lesson. Perhaps a few younger adults won’t understand why I didn’t stop. If I can help anybody who is at all confused about this story, it will be worth my time.
While I was trying to weed through and pick out good literature to read to my first and second graders, I paused and reflected when I came to “Jack and the Beanstalk”. It’s a fairy tale, a classic for children; of course it must be good. Right? I am ashamed to confess, I wavered. It had never before occurred to me to analyze Jack’s moral integrity, but once I had done so, I found the matter quite puzzling.
The boy is clearly a thief. He steals the giant’s prized possessions repeatedly and yet is obviously being depicted as the hero, not the villain. How can this be a wholesome message? Not only is there no indication that Jack has done wrong, but contrarily, the reader is put in the position of rooting for him. Why is this thief portrayed as a good guy? Why is it alright for him to steal? How can I justify his actions? Why do I want to pass this story on to the children in my care? Do I want to pass it on?
These were some of my perplexities. And yet, even as these questions were nagging me, I couldn’t get away from the fact that this fairy tale had been judged valuable by bazillions of people before me: generations of mothers, fathers, teachers, publishers, and everyone else, for centuries. They all thought it was a good story, worthy of being passed on. Who was I to have a question about its moral rectitude? I concluded that the real problem must be my backwards, modern thinking, and not the fairy tale.
But even so, there was a mystery about it all that wanted solving. For a long time I tried to get answers from books — any book which would speak to the issue either specifically or in a general way. While I did find some things here and there which helped me to understand a few universal ideas about fairy tales, I never came across anything addressing the particulars of Jack’s situation. However, after several years of reading, pondering, and praying, I am finally satisfied with the understanding I have reached. I hope I have learned to see a little better the very simple and childlike truths that are hidden in this story. Here are some of my hypotheses about Jack, the thief; please take them or leave them as you like.
It is my suspicion that this little burglar is portrayed as the good guy precisely because he really is the good guy, and furthermore, because he represents all good guys. It seems to me that in this story, as with all fairy tales, a greater reality than the most readily apparent one is being highlighted. I believe Jack can be taken as a symbol, and that as such he would stand for man reaching toward celestial goods. The giant, on the other hand, seems to represent evil; not an evil person, but evil itself. From that vantage point, it would follow that the good guy should rescue — should wrest from the clutches of evil — the good things which are meant to help man. If we replace the gold, the hen, and the harp in the story with such goods as beauty, truth, and grace, we might better appreciate that the giant, the evil entity, has no business with these goods. The message I see being communicated by Jack taking the goods from the giant is that the giant has no right to them — evil has no rights.1
This idea is an important one which reaches far beyond the question of Jack and the giant. It strikes me as a very relevant principle in these times and in this country; one which helps to clear the air of some toxic fumes we’ve been breathing for multiple generations. Educators, for example, have absolutely no right to teach falsehoods, even if they believe them to be truths. A government does not have any right to promote what is wicked and attack what is innocent, even if the citizens confuse the notions of wickedness and innocence. And how about this one: false religions have no right to be taught, spread, or perpetuated, even if they are not recognized as false. I do not mean to say that evil people have no rights, but rather that people have no right to do evil. This is still the case when they do not know right from wrong — good from evil. While ignorance can mitigate the guilt of one who speaks erroneously, it does not turn error into truth. Ignorance does not make what is bad good or prevent evil from being destructive and harmful.
The giant, who represents all that is wrong, should be confronted and destroyed. Obviously, this is not a popular idea among the giants’ rights activists of the world, who are constantly trying to gain sympathy, compassion, and understanding for all things malevolent. Of course, they do not say directly that we ought to love evil; that would not appeal to anybody. Rather, they claim that we must love and accept all people, by which they mean the sins of all people. This sophism is much more to their taste. But in reality a person is not indistinguishable from his sins. This makes it not only possible, but necessary to love the one and hate the other. There is no conflict for us to love and sympathize with all sorts of people, while refusing to move an inch toward embracing their errors or compromising our convictions. Jack ought not love what is evil, nor apologize for chopping off its head. It is an honor and privilege to participate in saving what is good from the snares of the fiend.
So now I read “Jack and the Beanstalk” with gusto. Although children, by and large, are not so mixed up about good and evil as to wonder why Jack steals from the giant, I am prepared with an answer should the question arise. Without hurting the magic and mystery of this great story by giving adult explanations, I would simply point out to the little ones that the giant eats boys; remember the “Fe Fi Fo Fum” business? And I’ll tell you, children are smart enough to equate a boy-eating giant with a monster who ought to be destroyed, and whose treasure truly belongs to the hero, who is brave enough to rescue it.
I recommend keeping the stories from long ago and passing them on to the next generation. Furthermore, we must resist the temptation to entrust such a task to the likes of Disney and its perfidious accomplices. There is too much at stake for that. We are trying to raise Jacks who will destroy giants at a time when the giants are looking to negotiate peace treaties. Let us nourish ourselves and our children with literary “butter and honey, that [we and they] may know to refuse the evil and choose the good” (Isa. 7:15).
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1. While evil per se has no rights, evil people do have rights, though they have no right to perpetrate evil. Let us recall that, in our reading of the story, the giant is a personification of evil; hence, he — being evil itself — has no rights.
