Module 6 - Poetry, Drama, Media, & Graphic Novels
"Read three of the following selections:"
Plot Summary
Rapunzel has been raised in her mother's extensive walled castle, befriending and playing with the guards and staff through the years. As she grows, so does her curiosity for what lies beyond the walls until she finally finds a way over and discovers that her mother is not the woman she has grown up with, but is instead one of the mining slaves outside the wall. As punishment for her escape, she is taken to the woods and imprisoned in a living tower for many years. When she finally stands up to her kidnapper, Mother Gothel, her prison turns against her and she must escape. Following her escape, she vows to find her real mother and bring revenge upon Mother Gothel. Shortly after her escape, she befriends Jack and the two of them travel together through various misadventures to find Rapunzel's mother and seek revenge.Critical Analysis
The setting of this tale is unique among Rapunzel stories. The placement in the wild west lends a new dialect to the telling of this traditional story. The language chosen also conveys this setting for us through slang and word choices, as is evident in Rapunzel's exclamation when she makes it over the wall, "Well I'll be swigger-jiggered and hung out to dry," or her narration of her time in the tower, "To keep from going batty, I made use of my dratted hair."The characters are essential to the story, as Gothel, the evil witch, in this version is depleting the surrounding land of its ability to sustain life. Without this magical ability, the story would be fundamentally altered. Rapunzel, is of course a required element to any retelling of the tale. She and her hair play the central role. The adaptation of her locks into a lasso and whip are also essential to the wild west period feel of the story. She ceases to be a damsel in distress and instead takes control of her own fate.
The brightly colored panels convey the setting and emotions of the characters well. Flashback scenes appear in a faded sepia tone to indicate age and reminiscence. The layout, in typical comic book style, take advantage of different panel shapes and layouts on the pages to speed the reader along or to slow them down through important moments. The frames are even broken at times, as when Rapunzel first ever uses her hair as a weapon to intervene in a bar brawl. She SNAPs her hair at the edge of a panel, and the results of that are shown in the panel itself.
Bibliography
Hale, Shannon, Dean Hale, and Nathan Hale. Rapunzel's revenge. New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury, 2008. ISBN 9781599900704.Reviews
From Publishers Weekly:The popular author of Princess Academy teams with her husband and illustrator Hale (no relation) for a muscular retelling of the famously long-haired heroine's story, set in a fairy-tale version of the Wild West. The Hales' Rapunzel, the narrator, lives like royalty with witchy Mother Gothel, but defies orders, scaling villa walls to see what's outside--a shocking wasteland of earth-scarring mines and smoke-billowing towers. She recognizes a mine worker from a recurrent dream: it's her birth mother, from whom she was taken as punishment for her father's theft from Mother G.'s garden. Their brief reunion sets the plot in motion. Mother G. banishes Rapunzel to a forest treehouse, checking annually for repentance, which never comes. Rapunzel uses her brick-red braids first to escape, then like Indiana Jones with his whip, to knock out the villains whom she and her new sidekick, Jack (of Beanstalk fame), encounter as they navigate hostile territory to free Rapunzel's mom from peril. Illustrator Hale's detailed, candy-colored artwork demands close viewing, as it carries the action--Rapunzel's many scrapes are nearly wordless. With its can-do heroine, witty dialogue and romantic ending, this graphic novel has something for nearly everybody.From VOYA:
This version of the classic fairy tale Rapunzel is set in the old Southwest, complete with cowboys, coal mines, and coyotes. Rapunzel is a young girl living in a fortress with Mother Gothel, an enchantress who can make plants grow at her whim. Although their home is overflowing with fruits and flowers, it is surrounded by a wall that masks the desert and coal mines outside-Gothel owns everything, and the native people depend on her good will to keep their crops growing. When Rapunzel sneaks over the wall on her twelfth birthday, she sees the desolate world over which Mother Gothel rules, and she meets her real mother who was forced to give Rapunzel to Gothel at birth. To punish her curiosity, Gothel imprisons Rapunzel inside an enchanted tree that has only one window, far above the ground. Just as in the original version, Rapunzel's hair grows prodigiously. But this girl does not need a prince to climb up and rescue her. She uses her braid as a lasso to escape the tree and goes on many adventures that lead her ultimately to reunite with her mother and find true love in a boy named Jack, whose companion is an uncooperative goose. The Hale team creates an engaging heroine. Rapunzel gallivants across the unexpected setting, meets a cast of characters both humorous and threatening, and in the end comes to inherit the land that Gothel had stripped of life and returns it to the native people. This novel presents entertaining girl power at its quirkiest.-Laura Lehner.From School Library Journal:
This is the tale as you've never seen it before. After using her hair to free herself from her prison tower, this Rapunzel ignores the pompous prince and teams up with Jack (of Beanstalk fame) in an attempt to free her birth mother and an entire kingdom from the evil witch who once moonlighted as her "mother." Dogged by both the witch's henchman and Jack's outlaw past, the heroes travel across the map as they right wrongs, help the oppressed, and generally try to stay alive. Rapunzel is no damsel in distress--she wields her long braids as both rope and weapon--but she happily accepts Jack¿s teamwork and friendship. While the witch¿s castle is straight out of a fairy tale, the nearby mining camps and rugged surrounding countryside are a throwback to the Wild West and make sense in the world that the authors and illustrator have crafted. The dialogue is witty, the story is an enticing departure from the original, and the illustrations are magically fun and expressive. Knowing that there are more graphic novels to come from this writing team brings readers their own happily-ever-after.--Cara von Wrangel Kinsey, New York Public LibraryFrom Booklist:
This graphic novel retelling of the fairy-tale classic, set in a swashbuckling Wild West, puts action first and features some serious girl power in its spunky and strong heroine. Young Rapunzel lives a lonely life, never knowing what lies beyond the high garden walls of her mother's royal villa until one day she climbs the wall to see what's on the other side. When she finds that the world outside is a dark place oppressed by her mother's greed for power and uncovers the real secret of her own birth, she is imprisoned in a magic tree tower. In her years of captivity, she learns a lot about self-reliance and care for her exceptionally long hair, and eventually she is able to escape, vowing to bring down her mother's cruel empire. Hale's art matches the story well, yielding expressive characters and lending a wonderful sense of place to the fantasy landscape. Rich with humor and excitement, this is an alternate version of a classic that will become a fast favorite of young readers.--Coleman, Tina
