Beauty and the Beast Literary Analysis Essay Example

outside of the castle. The Beast was ashamed of his looks and would not step outside into society. In a nearby village a beautiful young girl resides by the name of Belle.

Belle is a bookworm who feels misunderstood because she is intellectual. She finds herself daydreaming about a life outside the provincial village and a better life. Her father Maurice is an inventor. He decides to compete at an inventor’s competition but fails in his attempt to regain his wealth. He ends up wandering in the forest and becomes lost in a snowstorm. He seeks shelter at The Beast’s castle and become a prisoner for trespassing. Belle realizing her father has been missing goes look for him. Belle is attacked by wolves outside the castle and The Beast comes to her aid.

She then finds her father in the castle and offers an exchange. The Beast agrees to release him, but she must remain in his castle forever. At first Belle see the Beast as nothing more than a monster. The Beast responds by viewing her as stubborn and difficult. Belle finds a library within the castle and becomes more at ease. As time goes on the Beauty and The Beast have meet every evening for supper. The mutual feeling between the two change and they begin to learn from each other. He releases her so she may tend to her father’s illness.

Gaston a conceited man trying to gain Belle’s love forms a lynch mob to kill The Beast. He finds The Beast and mortally stabs him. Gaston falls off the castle to his death during battle. Belle returns to help The Beast with his wounds

while realizing she truly loves him. The Beast dies and Beauty gives him a kiss that revives him. They both fall in love with one another just before the last petal drops. The Beast and his staff are transformed back to their normal state once the spell has been broken. When looking at this fairytale through a moral and philosophical lens we can see there are lessons to be learned.

The three most important include not judge a book by its cover, offer help to those in need, and being humble for what you are given. Each one of these is moral examples that should be understood and used in our own lives. The biggest lesson that came to mind was not to judge a book by its cover. True beauty is found within. It may take a while to surface and show itself, but it eventually will become known. Belle is frightened and views The Beast as nothing but a monster. She only sees what’s on the outside. In actuality, The Beast is not really a monster, but a cursed lonely man who made a poor choice.

Beauty is only skin deep. Belle doesn’t realize it until she spends time and understands who The Beast really is as a person. The second moral that could teach us how to live our lives is by helping those in need. The Enchantress asked for help from Prince Adam and once rejected makes him pay for his action. If Prince Adam had helped her from the start he and his staff would not have been transformed. It’s the right thing to do and if the shoe was on the

other foot how would it feel? The final moral is to be humble with what you have been given.

The prince had everything from good looks to his own castle in France. He was selfish and spoiled. He wasn’t happy and always seemed angry. He could not appreciate what he had been given in the beginning and doesn’t learn to appreciate life until he meets Belle. The folklore has examples of Freudian. Both The Beauty and the Best both show signs of psychological traits. Belle never sees her father doing wrong. In her mindset he is always good. She becomes closer to him because she doesn’t have to fight with her mother and takes on the motherly role by doing all the housework for her father.

There is an unconscious desire. Belle wants to read but desires more than just that. She is not sure what or where to find it, until she starts to take an interest in The Beast. She shows psychological fear when meeting The Beast. Beauty sees the exterior and the “monster”. Belle from a feminist stand point is very strong and intellectual through the story. Beauty had a passion for reading and back then women didn’t read or learn much at all. Everyone in her town thought she was weird for it, but she does it anyway. She went against society and didn’t listen to what others thought.

In this regard she was psychologically different and had a fixation for knowledge. The Beast also is unconsciously searching for more. He seeks someone to love him for whom he is. Within the story The Beast represses his past and all things he once knew.

He tries to forget because it helps him deal with the curse and it’s his coping mechanism. When The Beast tells Belle she must stay forever there is an unconscious desire for her to love him. Beauty and The Beast was enjoyable to read. I got the interpretation that love isn’t always instant.

It takes time to grow and manifest into truly something special. The books gave me the belief that Prince Adam learned his lesson and became a better person after being cursed. I think Belle found what she was looking for when she first met The Beast, but didn’t realize until she fell in love with him. The fairytale gives great life lesson to take and use in our own lives. The literary analysis gives a deeper look into Beauty and The Beast. The book is a popular text that continues to better understand ourselves while enjoying a good love story. We all have the potential to be beautiful or beastly.