My interpretation of "The Vegetational Fatherhood"

Lucky for me, my first response to "The Vegetational Fatherhood" was to interpret the story through dance, easily completing everything the prompt asked for. Here is a quick summary of what it looked like.

Growing flower, wind, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, unicorn, rain storm. Corpse pose. Egg hatching, wind blowing, seaweed; otters holding hands.

After I got that out of my system, I was able to compose a more literary response. Lets walk through this fairy tale line by line. The first paragraph seems to make a very different point than the introduction in "A wondrous oriental tale of a naked saint." Here, it is not the human mind that colors perception, but an outright fact that flowers emit a sympathetic current-to not sense this truth either makes you a person without feelings or possibly Irish. While Wackenroder seems to only be trying to make room for the possibility of his story, Mynona takes a much more aggressive angle and argues that his point of view that flowers are creatures is the only acceptable one. Even after I was immediately insulted for still questioning "whether plants have a direct suggestive effect on animals and humans," Mynona was still able to elicit a chuckle from me with the anthropomorphic flower stalking our young woman friend like a big cat.

I am going to skip analyzing/interpreting the flower rape so I don't say anything I'll regret later. However, I will say I was able to guess as soon as I read these lines that she was going to bear a child from the encounter.

I was also struck by the young girl's interactions with her two doctors. The first doctor she consults is finally able to pin down her symptoms and ask if she is having a love affair. This is a little tongue-in-cheek; for the most part physical symptoms of a love affair seem to confine themselves to angst-y Miley Cyrus-loving tweens. And for correctly diagnosing the illness, the doctor's help is no longer appreciated. I'm a little surprised that Mynona was willing to take such a direct shot at socialized health care, but it made me giggle like a angst-y Miley Cyrus-loving tween. Doctor number two is also able to correctly identify the our young girl's condition, and "When the young woman became enraged, he attributed it to hysteria." This is cute wordplay. Hysteria, of course, "was originally thought to be due to a disturbance of the uterus" (compliments of the OED and my knowledge on how to use the interwebs. Its not a dump truck, its a series of tubes.) But, we can't tell if his "hysterical" diagnosis refers to her actual condition of pregnancy via flower or the fact that she freaks out. Either way, the word choice is deliberate and hilarious.

Lets fast forward a couple paragraphs to where the flower-child reaches puberty. She starts a nightly metamorphosis, which is actually pretty run of the mill as far as fairy tale metamorphoses go. This part fits in well with more traditional fairy tales. Thank goodness the end is more exciting! Call me twisted, but I find the end where the fiance not only kills his wife but then gets convicted of murder and spends the rest of his days in an asylum delightfully unexpected. Not your typical fairy tale ending. I also think it is interesting that the beginning of the story is very specific in telling you how to correctly interpret life, but the end speculates if the truth will ever be known. Mynona is certainly willing to play with our perceptions of fairy tales. However, I am accepting enough to not have problems accepting the magical elements of the tale and twisted enough to not only swallow, but enjoy, the deranged parts of the tale. I give this fairy tale a gold star.


I'll leave you with a final literary response:

There was once a young girl made of rose (a)
whom at mattens put on quite a show (a)
she'd turn to a plant (b)
but the damage was scant (b)
till the night she went out the window (a)

Song of the Blog: "Grace Kelly," by Mika.