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Fairy tales are never about what they are about; they are a means for teaching through telling stories, for allowing cultures to survive from generation to generation. Learning is essential to the continuation of the symbolic language that is culture.

The relationship of image both as visual symbol and as metaphor is perhaps best understood in the stories particularly fundamental to Western culture which revolve around the apple. Clearly its symbolic origins are linked to the vulva shape of its cross-sectioned core with its evocation of fertility. From the beginning of time as we know it, the apple was used as a symbol of springtime, youth, and even immortality. Greek, Nordic, and Celtic mythology refer to it as the sustaining fruit of the gods in the story of the Apple of Discord, also known as the Apple of Hesperides and the golden apple tossed by Eris set off the Trojan War. The tree of knowledge in Scripture is the source of the fall of humankind, and thereafter the apple becomes a principal metaphor in all Western religion. Eastern cultures similarly attribute beauty and renewal to the apple blossom and its fruit.

Once the story begins and cultural meaning is attributed to the iconic apple, the potentials and creative uses of the metaphor are endless. One need only think of these other great stories of the apple: the apple of Sodom; the myth of Atalanta; NewtonÕs apple; Johnny AppleseedÕs legacy; William Tell's arrow; Camelot, the Arthurian tale located in the apple orchard Avalon; and finally Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and the poisoned apple. The great power of such storytelling and the great symbolic meaning attached inspired Steve Wozniac and Steve Jobs to name their icon-driven computer the Apple in 1976.

Fairy tales are stories told for enchantment of youth, set in a place and time that are geographically and temporally vague. The heroes and heroines are a-historical, allowing each individual to transpose on them their unique interpretation; they are archetypical. Snow White, a widely known tale, probably found its origins in Central Europe and became disseminated throughout the continent in varying forms and incarnations. For example, the classic Italian version was retold in 1956 by novelist Italo Calvino, in his story "The Apple Girl." The storyÕs magic lies in its use of the metaphor of the apple and the evocation of freshness of the Snow WhiteÐlike heroine.

A common myth is that of the trickster, a character who exploits the audienceÕs greed or stupidity to mock them. Often in the guise of an animal, the trickster practices deceit and magic, and may be anything from a hero to an evildoer. Most likely, these myths represent a fundamental human interest in deception and change. Native American trickster tales tell of everything from the coyote to the raven. In South America and Japan it is the fox. African tales have tricksters in the form of spiders, hares, or tortoises, while the fifteenth-century Chinese literary classic The Journey to the West tells of the exploits of the monkey trickster-god. The tale is thought to have originated in India and traveled to China through stories passed on in the oral tradition.

Many of todayÕs European folk tales originate in preliterate times and were comprehensively and exactingly documented by the German philologists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,, in their collection Kinder und HausmŠrchen in 1812. They collected material through interviews with peasants who had preserved these stories by retelling them over generations. By preserving preliterate peasant tales in one volume, the Grimms believed that they were rebuilding a cultural identity that had been fragmented when the Medieval church suppressed their telling.