By Anna Kunze
Astrophysics might seem like the furthest thing from the humanities one could study. Even other sciences seem more connected–botany, maybe, could relate to the flora of Rapunzel, or, what about psychology? Those, at least, seem relevant to the time period from which folk and fairy tales originate. How could the study of deep space have any connection to a story about three pigs building little houses or a little girl who gets eaten by a wolf? However, there are many parallels between space exploration and fairy tales that should be explored because comparisons between the two allow us to understand each of them better through the universal truths they jointly reveal. Though they may seem distantly related, each of them provides unique insight to the other based on their unexpectedly similar bases. A central theme connecting the two is curiosity–not the Mars rover, though that is a good example, but the significance of curiosity in propelling the cultural significance of both space and Mother Goose.
Space is often referred to as “the great unknown,” or “the final frontier.” The popular interest in space exploration is based on innate curiosity; the same trait as that which leads fairy tale protagonists to violate interdictions so often that Propp classified it as one of his functions. This curiosity, especially in female characters, tends to have immediate and negative consequences: Red Riding Hood’s eaten, Bluebeard’s wife nearly gets murdered, Sleeping Beauty falls asleep for 100 years. However, after getting to know what lurks in the dark, they take important lessons away from their experiences. By drawing comparisons between the rebelliousness which makes fairy tale characters so relatable to so many and the determination of scientists to delve as far into space as possible—to venture into a space so vast and unknown that it seems like God has forbidden knowledge of it to us—the fiery desire to discover and to know what has been kept from us is made apparent. Children especially are fascinated by space–‘an astronaut!’ is a common answer to the question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ This starry eyed, childlike wonder about space never really disappears even as kids grow into adults who have a more fleshed out understanding of the world around them and for whom the curtain has been pulled back a bit, dissipating a bit of the magic in the mundane that comes with the innocence of childhood. Space is unknown to everyone. The magnitude of it is not meant for human comprehension, so there is a lingering awe even in the eyes of the most learned astrophysicists who know of the scientific explanations for many cosmic phenomena when viewing images from the Hubble Space Telescope, or more recently the James Webb Telescope. There is a reason why viewing a total solar eclipse is regarded by so many as a life-changing experience. Seeing ourselves from a cosmic bird’s eye view provides a perspective not often seen–not outside of works of fiction. Fairy tales and mythology offer the same broad feeling of camaraderie with the rest of humankind because they offer the same (albeit more symbolic) bird’s eye view of ourselves as simply tiny little creatures being subjected to nature.
On an entirely different note, the financial investment in space exploration is often difficult to justify, but many countries still fund national space programs. There is not a clear-cut cost-benefit analysis to do in order to determine how much money should be spent for the potential of discovery. Some knowledge has value beyond profit, and paying for an opportunity to learn is quite a familiar experience for all college students. Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the most famous astrophysicists in the modern day argues that part of the reason that so many scientists believe in the value of researching the cosmos is that looking outward to other planets and other galaxies can prepare us for the future of Earth. He writes that knowing more about potential futures soothes us and gives us more hope for survival and that seeing our own planet’s siblings at different stages of development allows us to plan ahead to develop necessary technology for similar future eras (deGrasse Tyson). The value deGrasse Tyson places on discovery and knowledge is explained explicitly in fairy tale retelling Into the Woods. In the show, Little Red Riding Hood sings an entire song about how important it is to learn about the world and how “isn’t it nice to know a lot?” She does, however, immediately bring up a counterpoint to deGrasse Tyson’s appeal and continues to sing about how while it is nice to be a person that knows, it can also be unpleasant to discover and accept harsh realities. This caveat is not often considered in scientific endeavors, though it might be wise to analyze. There are always the questions: “What if we’re not meant to know?” “What if knowing makes it worse for us?” These questions are particularly applicable to science, which is entirely founded on the principle that knowing is always better than not. But have we learned nothing from original sin? Eve ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge and Pandora opened the box so they could know, and these were the original sins that created evil in our world. A logical follow-up question would be, Does opening our minds to possible cosmic, Lovecraftian horror indicate that we have learned nothing from these stories? However, this is a misinterpretation of these tales meant to show that curiosity does not follow logic and telling a child not to do something only makes them more likely to do it. It reveals that ignorance is only bliss as long as it is possible to maintain it, but in every story, there comes a point where the hero must become a ‘knower,’ just as a child must grow up. There is an inevitability built into these tales–eventually, one will always become a knower; Eve will always eat the apple; Little Red Riding Hood will always be eaten. Therefore, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s point still stands–learning more about the place where we live has more potential to soothe our fears about the future than to create new ones.
This assumption plays into the fact that horror and consequence can be digested more easily with a degree of separation. The separation that “once upon a time” creates is similar to the separation of “in a galaxy far, far away.” Distance, whether that be through time or space, allows us to see the potential results of our actions without being completely overcome with anxiety. Experiencing something new for the first time can be softened by hearing about other experiences with the same thing. Many fairy tales explain experiences like sex, marriage, childbirth, and becoming financially independent indirectly. They are created to pass knowledge from the knowers to the innocent in a way that does not magnify fear. Being aware that these are things that must happen allows for a period of mental preparation that makes the real experience more manageable. Not knowing things about yourself or your body is a terrifying experience– a theme of movies and books like Carrie, by Stephen King, which binds the protagonist not knowing about menstruation to not knowing of her own psychic ability and eventually killing most people around her and dying herself. This is a heightened, fictional example, but the intense fear that can come with new experiences is very real. The NASA website has an oddly similar explanation for why funding for space programs is important. It states that observing other planets and creating potential space travel and colonization options allows humans to feel better about their odds of survival as the Solar System grows older and enters new phases of its life. With looming threats on Earth like climate change and overpopulation, space travel technology opens up potential options for the improvement of living conditions for all people (NASA). Specifically, observing galaxies and solar systems that are further along in their life cycle makes us feel more secure about the future of Earth because we can know what to expect, just like how fairy tales allow children and young adults to look intimately at the experiences people have as they grow up and feel more secure about their future because they know what to expect.
The morals/lessons that fairy tales teach us support the arguments that scientists and scientific organizations make for why it is important for the human race to continue to sink resources into space exploration. The two subjects, while vastly different at first glance, can easily be woven into analyses of each other. They both are inextricably linked to the human experiences of fear, rebelliousness, and curiosity, and the analysis of why fairy tales are relevant and what they are trying to communicate can easily be transferred and applied to analyze why space is so appealing to so many people.
Works Cited
deGrasse Tyson, Neil. “The Case for Space: Why We Should Keep Reaching for the Stars.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 91, no. 2, 2012, pp. 22–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23217218. Accessed 15 Apr. 2024.
Griffin, M. (2007, July). The real reasons we explore space. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-real-reasons-we-explore-space-18816871/.
King, Stephen. Carrie. 1974. Hornsea, England, Ps Publishing Ltd, 2014.
NASA. “Why Go to Space – NASA.” Nasa.gov, 2023, www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/why-go-to-space/Sondheim, Stephen, and James Lapine. I Know Things Now. Into the Woods, 2014.
